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It s strange—the feeling a big empty house 
gives a person. 















The TREASURE of 
BELDEN PLACE 


by 

FRANCES CAVANAH 

M 

illustrated by 

LUCILLE WALLOWER 


A Mystery Tale of Lost Heirlooms 


JUNIOR PRESS BOOKS 

alberT¥whitman 

Cr' 4C0 

CHICAGO 



Copyright, 1938, by Albert Whitman & 

Copyright, 1928, by Laidlaw Brothere 


To Isabel Hamer Smith, 
whose mother was the Patty of this story. 


Printed in U. S. A. 


117238 

l ' v 


2 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


Chapter Page 

I. Belden Place _ 9 

II. The Surprise. 23 

III. The Beginning of a Mystery. 31 

IV. The Warning. 39 

V. The Mysterious Baseball Bat. 54 

VI. The Secret Door.. 65 

VII. Jimmy _ 71 

VIII. New Friends. 81 

IX. Spaulding, Morrison and Fisher, 

Detectives-91 

X. The Little Old Horsehair Trunk.100 

XI. The Old Diary..109 

XII. Patty’s Fascinating Idea.121 

XIII. Patsy Spaulding, Playwright.132 

XIV. The Missing Pages.....147 

XV. A Party and an Appointment.158 

XVI. The Topaz Brooch.168 

3 

















XVII. Great-Grandfather Belden’s Desk.175 

XVIII. The Jewels of the First Patricia...188 

XIX. Rewards and Disappointments.198 

XX. Several Treasures. ...203 




4 .. 






LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Facing Page 

It’s strange—the feeling a big empty 

house gives a person.Frontispiece 

There, perched in the branches above us, was a 

darling little house. 32 ' 

It was fun the next morning showing Jimmy 
over Belden Place. 80 

Patty and I forgot all about the jewels in our 
joy over what we found.112 

Leaves from an Old Diary — dramatized by 
Patsy Spaulding...144 

And there on Jean’s pink little palm lay a topaz 
brooch surrounded by diamonds.176 


5 






























/ 






• » 















FOREWORD 


Treasures are the heritage of children, and a 
treasure hunt is the supreme adventure. Mystery 
is a rightful part of childhood; the deciphering of 
the unknown is a natural and worthy impulse. 

Belden Place yielded many treasures—not only 
the jewels for which Patty and Patsy make such a 
gratifying search. It yielded secrets of the past 
to the young adventurers, and these secrets enrich 
their lives. The pre-Civil War days of the Under¬ 
ground Railroad become living days, and the great¬ 
grandmother who had been such a valiant figure 
during those troublesome times becomes a living 
figure. 

Aside from entertainment, the story does much 
toward building up an understanding of American 
life and the things for which it stands. The condi¬ 
tions of Civil War days become a part of the tale, 
and the reader, in the midst of narrative interest, 
r 


all unconsciously absorbs facts of definite informa¬ 
tional value. 

May the treasures which Patty and Patsy found 
at Belden Place also enrich the lives of the boys 
and girls who read about them! 

The Treasure of Belden Place will prove to be one 
of the most enticing treasures of any juvenile 
library. 

—The Publishers. 


8 


CHAPTER I 


BELDEN PLACE 

ff'^T'ES, it must be there some place,” said Mr. 

Whitney, as he tied up my sack of sugar. 

“You don’t mean there’s a secret room in my 
Grandfather Belden’s house — one that nobody 
knows anything about?” I gasped, so excited that 
I almost dropped the package he handed me over 
the counter. “Oh, Mr. Whitney, are you sure?” 

“Well, now, that’s what my father told me when 
I was just a little shaver, and he knew your great- 
grandpap pretty well. It was during the late fifties 
and the old house was one of the stations, as they 
used to call ’em, in the Underground Railroad.” 

“And the secret room must have been the place 
he hid the poor black folks,” I said. “Why, Patty 
will be so thrilled that—” 

“I wouldn’t set too much store by what I told 
you,” Mr. Whitney interrupted a bit doubtfully. 
“More’n likely, they walled the secret room up long 
ago.” 

I looked the old storekeeper straight in the eye. 
“You haven’t just been teasing me, have you?” 

“Indeed, I haven’t, little missy,” he said seriously. 


10 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


“I’ve just been telling you what my father told me 
once.” 

Patty Morrison was my cousin and she and her 
mother, who was my mother’s sister, still lived in 
the rambly old house at the edge of town that had 
belonged to our Grandfather Belden and to his 
father before him. Everybody in Fayetteville called 
Patty and me “those Pat girls” or the “twin 
cousins,” because she was born just one day after 
I was, and we were both named Patricia after our 
Great-grandmother Belden. Mother and Daddy 
were living in San Francisco at the time, so they 
didn’t know anything about Aunt May having a 
little girl named Patricia. And, of course, Aunt 
May didn’t know anything about me; and by the 
time letters had a chance to travel back and forth, 
we were already named and our births had been 
registered. But when we moved back to Fayette¬ 
ville, it hadn’t been so confusing as you might think, 
because I had been nicknamed Patsy and my cousin 
was called Patty. 

Patty and I were to be separated for a whole 
month, so I wasn’t at all happy as I walked home 
from the grocery store—in spite of the splendid 
secret that old Mr. Whitney had told me. I was 



Belden Place 


11 


crazy to begin exploring the old house, which the 
townspeople still called Belden Place, and I knew 
that my cousin would be, too, because she loves treas¬ 
ure hunts just as much as I do. You see, Great¬ 
grandmother Belden’s jewels had disappeared very 
mysteriously, away back in Civil War days, and 
no trace of them ever had been found. But now 
I had a hunch that they might be in the secret room. 

Daddy had to be away on a business trip, so 
Mother and I were leaving the next day to spend 
four or five weeks at a very stupid hotel at the sea¬ 
shore where we had gone for several summers. My 
cousin and aunt were going to the mountains, and 
Patty said that her hotel was just as stupid as mine. 
Our cottage was to be closed, but Aunt May was 
leaving Belden Place in charge of the new house¬ 
keeper—John the gardener’s sister—who was to 
come down from Arlington, the city twenty miles 
up the river. Of course, my aunt stored the silver 
and things like that in the bank, but you couldn’t 
put antique furniture in a lockbox, no matter how 
valuable it was. The gardener had all he could do 
looking after the grounds and the greenhouses, and 
he seemed very anxious to have his sister with him. 

I stopped at the hollow tree which Patty and I 



12 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


used for a post office. We were always leaving let¬ 
ters for each other there and little surprise pack¬ 
ages—paper dolls and things like that—and, sure 
enough, this time I found a note. I opened it hur¬ 
riedly and read: “Isn’t it wonderful? Mother just 
told me. Hooray!” 

What she meant by that I had no idea, but I 
knew that when Patty said, “Hooray,” she meant 
“Hooray.” If her mother knew, then mine would, 
too. Besides, they were waiting for the sugar at 
home, so I had to go there first. I broke into a run, 
sure that something very splendid must have hap¬ 
pened. 

But Mother’s first words didn’t make me feel so 
certain. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Patsy,” she 
said, and suddenly all the rest of me seemed to sink 
right down into my stomach. Perhaps there wasn’t 
to be any surprise after all. Then Mother went 
on, “Would you mind very much if you didn’t go 
to the seashore this summer—if you had to stay up 
at Belden Place with Patty instead?” 

“Would I mind?” I said, and I gave Mother such 
a hug that she cried out, “Have a heart, Patsy 
darling!” 

“Why, Mother,” I told her, “I’d rather stay at 



Belden Place 


13 


Belden Place than anything I know of, if I can be 
with Patty. And I love my river better than all 
the seas in all the world.” 

“I’m glad of that, Daughter, because I don’t care 
about having a good time if my little girl can’t 
have a good time, too. You’ve heard me talk of 
Mrs. Richards. Well, she is planning to have a 
house party—a reunion of our old college crowd— 
and your Aunt May and I are very anxious to go.” 

“Will Mrs. Fisher, Aunt May’s new housekeeper, 
take care of us?” I asked. 

“Yes. May says that she seems so reliable and 
kind and that John has always been so trustworthy, 
that we need not hesitate to leave you youngsters 
with her.” 

“Mother,” I begged, “I just can’t wait another 
minute to see Patty. Please, may I go up there, just 
for a tiny while?” 

Mother laughed. “Run along, but be back by half 
past five. We’re having an early dinner.” 

Belden Place was at the very edge of the town, 
so I had quite a distance to walk—as distances in 
small towns go. There were several acres to the 
grounds, just as there had been in Great-grand' 




14 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


ratners time, and though Aunt May had received 
many good offers, she wouldn’t have sold any of it 
for anything. 

On one side was the orchard where Patty and I 
loved to play in the summer. In the back were the 
greenhouses and, facing a side street, the gardener’s 
cottage, now unused and much in need of repairs. 
Grandmother Belden had started with a conserva¬ 
tory, just because she loved flowers. Then when 
Aunt May had come into possession of the property 
and Patty’s father had died, she had gone into the 
florist business and had added more greenhouses. 
John had charge of them and lited at the house, but 
he had several other gardeners who came in to help 
him by the day. 

I turned in at the gate and followed the winding 
gravel walk up the sloping terraces to the wide 
porch with its high, round pillars. The house had 
once been yellow, but now it had aged into a musty, 
grayish brown, wherever any of the bricks peeped 
between the ivy. A long hall, upstairs and down, 
opened info rooms on either side—huge rooms with 
huge fireplaces, just like the ones that Great-grand¬ 
father had had in his home in Virginia. Why, there 
was even a fireplace in the higfi-ceilinged kitchen, 



Belden Place 


15 


which formed a wing by itself, with only a walled- 
up garret above it. 

Patty saw me coming and hurried down the walk 
to meet me. She was such a pretty girl, with long 
golden-reddish curls and dark brown eyes and a 
dimple in each cheek which looked nice when she 
talked and perfectly darling when she smiled. But 
the dimples weren’t showing very much just then, 
and I saw right away that she was in the dumps 
about something. 

Before I even had a chance to say a word about 
what Mr. Whitney had told me, she burst out, “Oh, 
Patsy, Mrs. Fisher doesn’t want to stay.” And she 
dragged me into the hall where her mother was 
talking with John, the gardener, and his sister. 

Mrs. Fisher looked much older than her brother. 
She wore a shabby black hat and a lightweight 
wrap. She was rather tall and a little stooped, and 
she seemed very tired, and worried, and discouraged. 
But she had such a nice smile that I soon forgot 
everything else. 

“I’ll gladly raise your wages,” Aunt May was say¬ 
ing. “I intended to do that when I learned that the 
children were to be left in your care.” 



16 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


“Oh, it’s not that, ma’am,” Mrs. Fisher an¬ 
swered, looking more troubled than ever. 

“Is it that you don’t like children?” my aunt sug¬ 
gested. 

“Oh, no! I — I love children.” 

But that must be it, even if she wouldn’t admit it, 
I decided. Mrs. Fisher didn’t want to look after 
Patty and me, and Aunt May’s plans had been 
changed so suddenly that she hadn’t had time to 
let the new housekeeper know before she came on 
from Arlington. 

I stepped up to her and, acting just as grown-up 
as I could, I said, “Mrs. Fisher, Patty and I shall 
try not to be a bit of trouble, and we’ll be very care¬ 
ful to mind you.” 

“Bless your heart!” she said, smiling down at me. 
“I’d like to stay.” 

Here John interrupted. “I hope you won’t think 
it—queer, Mrs. Morrison, but if I can see my sister 
out on the porch a minute, well, maybe I can get 
her to change her mind.” 

“Good for you, John! Do all you can for me,” 
Aunt May told him. 

They started out, but at the door he turned. “If 
my sister stays,” he asked, and seemed to hesitate, 



Belden Place 


17 


“do you reckon she can have the back, west room?” 

Aunt May seemed surprised. “Why, I suppose 
so. For the summer anyway. We have never used 
that room because it seems impossible to heat it. 
It isn’t in very good repair, but if Mrs. Fisher really 
wants it—” 

“It’s because it’s at the head of the back stairs,” 
John hastened to explain, “and with me sleeping 
just at the foot of the stairs and it being a strange 
house and all—” 

Aunt May cut John’s struggling explanations 
short. “It will be quite all right,” she said. “She 
will be near enough to hear the girls if they should 
call.” 

A queer little pucker drew Aunt May’s eyes 
together as she watched the gardener and his sister 
walk the length of the long veranda and stand there, 
near the honeysuckle vine, in earnest conversation 
with each other. “Well,” she said, “I’ve had house¬ 
keepers make all sorts of propositions to me, and 
requests, and demands, even; but never have I had 
one who begged to sleep in the shabbiest room in the 
house.” 

“What if she won’t stay?” Patty looked worried. 



18 


The Treamre of Bdden Place 


“There’d be nothing we could do but close up 
Belden Place,” Aunt May replied. 

“You and Mother wouldn’t give up your house 
party?” I asked. 

“We’d have to, dear. We couldn’t leave you girls 
with just anybody, you know. I’ll take Patty to 
the mountains, as I first intended, and your mother 
probably will decide to go to your same old seashore 
resort with you.” 

My aunt was called to the telephone, and Patty 
and I looked at each other in dismay. If Mrs. Fisher 
wouldn’t take charge, it would just spoil everything. 

“What’s the matter, Patsy?” my cousin asked. 
“You look so funny.” 

“I’d like to have a conference with you,” I whis¬ 
pered, remembering this was what Daddy always 
said, whenever he had to talk over anything impor¬ 
tant with another person. “I must see you alone.” 

“Oh, stop trying to be so mysterious,” Patty 
laughed and tried to act indifferent. But she led the 
way into the library all right and closed the door 
behind us; and when she sat down beside me on 
the davenport, I saw that I really had aroused her 
curiosity. It seems that Patty is always the one 



Belden Place 


19 


who is telling me interesting things, and it was fun 
to turn the tables just this once. 

“In this house,” I began, as solemnly as I knew 
how, “there is a secret room.” 

Patty wasn’t at all impressed, as I had thought 
she would be. She burst right out laughing and said 
she guessed she hadn’t lived at Belden Place all her 
life for nothing. “Why, Patsy, I know every inch 
of this old house. Whatever gave you that idea?” 

“Mr. Whitney gave it to me,” I retorted. “Our 
Great-grandfather Belden told his father all about 
it and said that he used to hide the runaway slaves 
in there, when they were trying to escape from 
their masters down south.” 

When I said that Mr. Whitney was the one who 
had told me, Patty began to pay attention. She 
knew and I knew that he was one of the oldest resi¬ 
dents of Fayetteville and that there wasn’t much 
of anything he didn’t know. Then when I men¬ 
tioned the poor black folks our great-grandfather 
had done so much to help in the days before the 
Civil War, she began to perk up like everything. 

“There may be something to it,” she said, grab¬ 
bing hold of my arm, her hands icy cold in her 
excitement. “You know, this house was one of the 



20 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


stations in the Underground Railroad, and Great¬ 
grandfather really did hide the runaway slaves.” 

“Then didn’t he have to have some place to hide 
them?” I asked. 

“Of course, he did. Oh, Patsy, we’ve been want¬ 
ing something exciting to happen and here’s a real 
mystery for us to solve.” 

“And a real treasure for us to find,” I added. 

“Treasure?” 

“Goosey! Don’t you remember that old story 
about the mysterious way Great-grandmother’s 
jewels disappeared so long ago. We might come 
across them in the secret room.” 

Patty gave a whoop and began waltzing me across 
the floor. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could 
find them while our mothers are away, and surprise 
them when they get back?” 

Of course, that was the very plan I had had in 
mind, but I knew that nothing very wonderful would 
happen if Mrs. Fisher didn’t consent to stay and 
look after us. I looked up at the old grandfather’s 
clock and saw that it was quarter after five. 

“Oh, dear, I wish she’d hurry up and decide before 
I leave. Do you suppose it would do any good to go 
out and try to persuade her?” 



Belden Place 


21 


My cousin rather doubted it, but we decided it 
would be worth trying. Then just as we opened the 
screen door leading onto the porch, we met John and 
Mrs. Fisher coming in. I looked at Patty and Patty 
looked at me; but now that we were face to face 
with them, it was hard to know how to begin our 
persuading. 

“I hope you’ll like the back, west room,” Patty said 
at last. “It isn’t pretty like the other bedrooms— 
but—but it has a scrumptious view of the orchard.” 

The tall, sad-looking woman smiled, and the trou¬ 
bled look left her eyes for a moment. “That’s what 
my brother told me,” she said. 

“Oh, Mrs. Fisher,” I blurted out, “I hope that you 
decide to stay.” 

She gave me a long, searching look; and then she 
looked at my cousin in exactly the same way. I 
squirmed and Patty squirmed, and we put our arms 
around each other. She seemed to be trying to read 
our thoughts—as people say in books—and it made 
us feel uncomfortable. 

Mrs. Fisher turned to her brother. “All right, 
John,” she said, “I’ll try it.” And the two of them 
opened the door and went inside to find Aunt May. 

Patty took me as far as the gate; or rather we 



22 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


raced each other to the gate, for we had to find some 
way of getting rid of our excitement. 

“I believe I’m going to like the new housekeeper,” 
I panted, catching up with my cousin, who had 
reached the goal just ahead of me. 

“Me, too,” said Patty. “But didn’t she act 
strange? I believe that Mrs. Fisher will be another 
mystery for us to solve, Patsy.” 

There was no time to stop and talk about it then, 
because I realized if I were to reach home by five- 
thirty, I’d have to run every step of the way. But 
Patty’s words kept repeating themselves to me as 
I hurried along; and as my feet would strike the 
pavement with soft, resounding thuds, I seemed to 
hear instead that one fascinating word—mystery, 
mystery, mystery. 

Oh, I was quite sure of it—a month of fun and 
adventure lay ahead of us. 



CHAPTER II 
THE SURPRISE 

r J £ 1 HERE was little time to think of mystery and 
adventure during the days that followed. Both 
houses were in a flurry of packing, and I didn’t even 
see my cousin until the next Thursday when we 
drove over to Arlington to take our mothers to the 
train. We had written them nice long train letters, 
and by combining our allowances for the last two 
weeks we had had enough to buy them a box of 
candy. 

The four of us were squeezed up together in the 
back seat, with Patty and me in the middle. We 
hadn’t intended to say anything about the candy 
until time for the train to leave, but when Mother 
hugged me up close to her, somehow or other I let 
the secret out and there was nothing to do but to 
hand over the present then and there. 

“It was dear of you to think of it,” said Mother. 

“Well,” Patty answered, “it’s our last chance to 
do anything for you for a whole month.” 

“Oh, no it isn’t,” said Aunt May. “Do you really 
want to do something to help me while I’m away?” 

Patty nodded. 


23 


24 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


“I’m having several pieces of that old furniture 
up in the attic fixed over by a Mr. Whiteside of 
Arlington, and he’s promised to call for them next 
week. Would you like to take the upholstering off 
the sofa and those two old horsehair chairs?” 

“Of course, Mother,” my cousin promised. 

“I’ll help, too,” I said. 

“That’s fine,” Aunt May answered, “because Mr. 
Whiteside will do the work a little cheaper if the 
upholstering is taken off first. I’m also having that 
old bureau down in the basement fixed up, so you 
might clean the rubbish out of the drawers while 
you’re about it.” 

When it came to telling Mother good-by at the 
station, it was much harder than I had expected. 
But I had made up my mind I wouldn’t cry, and I 
didn’t. I knew she was looking forward to that 
house party, and I wasn’t going to do a single thing 
to worry her. We waited there until the train pulled 
out, and the last she saw of me, I was smiling away 
like everything. 

We had driven over with Mrs. Meredith and Peg, 
and if it hadn’t been for them, I’m afraid it would 
have been a mighty gloomy ride back to Fayette- 



The Surprise 


25 


ville. Peg is one of our best friends and just about 
the jolliest girl I’ve ever known, and some of the 
things she said would have sent Patty and me into 
gales of giggles at any other time. Her mother 
tried to cheer us up by telling us that she and Mr. 
Meredith were planning to take our Jolly Half 
Dozen Club for a ride in their new launch the fol¬ 
lowing afternoon and that we would have a picnic 
supper on the Kentucky side. But even that didn’t 
seem to do much good. 

At the end of our twenty-mile ride back to Belden 
Place, we found Mrs. Fisher in the front doorway 
waiting to welcome us. It was the first time I had 
seen her since that day more than a week before 
when her brother had made that odd request about 
the back, west room. I had liked her then and I 
liked her now—there was something so comfortable 
about her—and I felt we wouldn’t miss our mothers 
quite so much with her there to look after us. But 
there was something queer about her, too, just as 
Patty had said, for though she smiled she didn’t 
seem to mean it. Not that she was cross or any¬ 
thing like that — it was only that she looked so 
worried. 

“Now if you’ll run upstairs and change into play 



26 


The Treamre of Bdden Place 


dresses,” she said, “I think John has a surprise for 
you.” 

Change into play dresses at four-thirty in the 
afternoon—that was a funny thing to do. The 
housekeeper must have noticed how astonished we 
were, for she added quickly, “You’ll understand 
when you see it.” 

We rushed upstairs to the big front bedroom, - 
which I was to share with my cousin during my stay 
at Belden Place. The housekeeper had unpacked 
my trunk, and when I opened the door into the closet 
there hung my dresses in a gay little row like posies 
in a flower bed. I picked out a blue-checked ging¬ 
ham—the one with the little appliqued flowers 
forming the pockets—and Patty slipped into the tan 
linen with the Buster Brown collar and the brown 
tie I’ve always liked so much. We were down 
on the front porch again before you could say, 
“Abra Cadabra” three times or even twice, and 
there we found John grinning so mysteriously that 
we were sure something very nice was about to 
happen. 

“Make ’em blind their eyes,” he said to his sister. 

So Patty and I closed our eyes tight shut and put 
our fingers over them. Mrs. Fisher turned us 



The Surprise 


27 


around again and again. And then she began 
walking us, guiding our steps through the orchard, 

I suspected, from the feel of the ground beneath my 
feet. It wasn’t easy to mix us up—we knew Belden 
Place too well for that. 

Finally Mrs. Fisher brought us to a stop and said, 
“Now you may uncover your eyes, girls.” 

We did and, as we had thought, we were in the 
orchard, and we were standing beneath the old apple 
tree we had so often climbed. 

“Look up!” said John. 

We did that, too, and there, perched in the 
branches above us, was a darling little house. 

“Why, John!” Patty gasped, and climbed up into 
the old apple tree almost before she had finished say¬ 
ing it. 

“Oh, goody!” I squealed and climbed up after 
her. 

What we found was not a really truly house but 
a platform about six feet square, with a railing 
around it high enough to keep us from tumbling off. 
The green-leaved branches with the sunshine sifting 
through made the walls—if you used your imagina¬ 
tion just a little—and the blue sky made a roof. On 
one side where the branches parted was a window, 



28 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


and through this we could look out over the other 
trees and have a glimpse of the Ohio River beyond. 
The river was beautiful that day—quiet and glassy 
and very blue, except where a passing skiff sent out 
rays of indigo into the pale stream. (I used that 
sentence in a composition once and the teacher 
marked it “A.”) 

“Thank you, John,” Patty called, leaning over the 
railing and looking down at him. “You’re one of 
the nicest people in Fayetteville.” 

“It’s a perfectly scrumptious surprise,” I added, 
“and I think you’re awfully smart.” 

The gardener blushed at our praise and seemed as 
happy about it as we were. He’s always like that— 
he gets more fun out of planning surprises for peo¬ 
ple than almost anybody that I know. 

“I’m glad you like it,” he called back to us. “I 
told your mothers that I thought you would.” 

He went back to the house then with his sister and 
left us alone to enjoy our quaint little treetop home. 

“Isn’t it like a bird’s nest,” I said, “tucked up 
here above the world? No wonder birds sing all the 
time—I feel like trilling, too!” 

“It will be like a fairy bower in the springtime,” 



The Surprise 


29 


Patty answered dreamily, “when the pale pink blos¬ 
soms are in bloom.” 

“And like an everlasting Thanksgiving feast, 
when the fruit is ripe,” I added. “We can reach 
out and pick an apple whenever we want to.” 

There were many plans to be made for the new 
play house, and it seemed that both of us were run¬ 
ning over with ideas. Patty remembered an old rag 
rug up in the attic, which we could use as a floor 
covering, and I thought of bringing cushions up to 
make the place more comfortable. And perhaps 
John would give us a porch box which he could fill 
with rich earth and nail in place on the outside of 
the railing. It would be fun to have a little flower 
garden of our own up among the treetops. 

“We’ve forgotten the most important thing of 
all,” said Patty. “We haven’t given it a name.” 

“How about ‘Treetop House’?” I asked. 

“I like ‘Fairy Bower’ better.” 

But that didn’t seem to suit exactly either; and 
we thought and thought and thought. Finally I had 
a wonderful idea. 

“Don’t you remember how Peter and the Lost 
Boys lived in the treetops? Let’s call this the Peter 
Pan House.” 



30 


The Treamre of Bdden PUtce 


“The very thing!” said Patty. You can pretend 
you’re Peter, and I’ll be Wendy because I have long 
curls.” 

We left the tree house reluctantly when the din¬ 
ner gong rang and I said I thought Peter Pan cer¬ 
tainly had an advantage over ordinary mortal chil¬ 
dren, never having to pay attention to bells and 
things like that. 

“But even Peter had to stop playing long enough 
to eat,” Patty argued; and when we sat down to 
the new housekeeper’s first dinner, we decided that 
we had a few advantages, too. For never, in Never 
Never Land, I am quite certain, was there such a 
good cook as Mrs. Fisher. 









CHAPTER III 

THE BEGINNING OF A MYSTERY 

WERE so tired that night that we decided 
to go to bed right after dinner. We didn’t 
intend to let ourselves drop off to sleep until our reg¬ 
ular bedtime; but it would be fun to undress early 
and crawl into the big canopied bed and read out 
loud to one another. I had borrowed a copy of The 
Adventures of Tom Sawyer from the public library 
more than a week before, but we hadn’t had time to 
finish it on account of helping our mothers and we 
could hardly wait to get back to it again. Patty and 
I just love boys’ stories anyway. 

“We mustn’t get so excited about the Peter Pan 
House that we forget the mystery,” I said as we 
undressed. “That’s the important thing to remem¬ 
ber.” 

“Of course,” Patty answered, “but the play house 
is going to be an awfully good place to think in. So 
we musn’t forget that either.” 

I laughed, because my cousin always was arguing 
that it was easier to think in the treetops than down 
on the ground. I’ve even known her to climb up in 
a tree when she had a particularly hard arithmetic 


31 


32 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


problem to solve. She said she could do twice as 
well in her school work in the tree-climbing season; 
but so far as I could tell, she had mighty good grades 
the year ’round. 

It was Patty’s turn to read, so she took the side 
of the bed nearest the table lamp. Usually the big 
four-poster bed with its rich silk canopy gives me 
the feeling of being in a tent—not the kind we use 
when we go camping, but the beautiful sort of tent 
the people who live on the desert are supposed to 
have. To-night, though, it was more fun to pretend 
the bed was a haunted house. Tom and Huckleberry 
Finn had a very scary adventure in a haunted house, 
once, and it made the story seem so much more real. 

“Go on,” I said. “We stopped last time where the 
boys dared each other to go upstairs.” 

My, that was an exciting chapter and Patty read 
as fast as she could, so we wouldn’t have to wait 
very long to find out what happened. It seemed to 
me I hardly breathed from the time Injun Joe and 
his wicked companion entered the downstairs of 
the haunted house and the boys overheard them plot¬ 
ting. It was all a little scary, and I put my arm 
around Patty’s neck just for the comfort of it. 
When she reached the place where Injun Joe started 




There, perched in the branches above us, was a 
darling little house. 





















































The Begmmng of a Mystery^ 


33 


to climb the creaky stairs and was about to discover 
the hiding place of the two boys, I got so excited 
that I began hugging her tighter and tighter. I 
didn’t even realize what I was doing until she yelled, 
“Ouch, you’re choking me!” She didn’t take time 
to say anything more, but hurried on with the read¬ 
ing until the boys were safe again. 

“I wish I could make up an exciting story like 
that,” I said. 

“Perhaps you won’t have to make it up. Maybe 
we’ll have a thrilling adventure our own selves that 
you can write about.” 

“A story about discovering the secret room?” I 
asked. 

“Yes, or about finding the jewels Great-grand¬ 
mother Belden lost.” 

The clock down in the library struck nine times. 
“Go-to-sleep! Go-to-sleep! Go-to-sleep!” it seemed 
to say. A moment later we heard Mrs. Fisher knock¬ 
ing at our door, and when she opened it we were 
surprised to see her looking so pale. Her hands were 
twisting the corner of her apron as though she 
wanted to tear it into bits. Her eyes, too, were queer 
—there was a “haunted look” about them, as I read 
in a story once. 



34 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


“Isn’t it about time you were asleep?” she asked, 
and her voice was shaking. 

We weren’t at all sleepy and we were anxious 
to go on with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but 
remembering what we had promised about minding, 
Patty reached over and turned out the table lamp. 
“Good night, Mrs. Fisher,” she said. 

“Sleep tight and pleasant dreams,” I added. 

“Good night,” said the new housekeeper. I tried 
to tell myself that I was imagining things; but I 
couldn’t help feeling that a note of relief had crept 
into her voice. 

I must have dozed then, for the next thing I heard 
our bedroom door creak open. I awoke with a start, 
to feel Patty’s hand squeeze mine and to hear her 
soft “Sh!” in the darkness. There in the doorway 
stood Mrs. Fisher, faintly silhouetted against the 
dim light of the hallway. Quietly she tiptoed over 
to our bed and—I don’t know why I did it—but I 
closed my eyes. Afterwards my cousin said that she 
did, too. Then, evidently, satisfied that we were 
asleep, the housekeeper tiptoed out again and the 
door closed with a second little creak. 

“No, I haven’t been asleep,” Patty explained, “so 
I wasn’t scared. But I was afraid you would be.” 



The Beginning of a Mystery 


35 


“She hasn’t any right to spy on us,” I said crossly, 
for I had been frightened. “We told her we’d put 
the light out and try to go to sleep and she should 
have believed us. Our mothers never doubt our word, 
and I don’t like it.” 

“I don’t think she meant to spy.” My cousin cud¬ 
dled up close to me and slipped a cold hand into mine. 
“I don’t know what it is, Patsy, but—but—I just 
feel it. There’s something awfully strange about 
this house to-night.” 

I squeezed her hand and tried to get her mind on 
something else. That “something else” happened 
to be the secret room, and we fell to talking of it in 

whispers. 

“You were right,” I said. “This is like being 
in a book. Let’s call it the mystery room.” 

“All right, but first we must figure out where it 
is and then find a way to get into it.” 

“In the stories there is nearly always a secret door 
or a sliding panel,” I reminded her. 

“I asked Mother about it, and she laughed at me. 
She said she was sure Grandfather Belden never 
had heard anything about a secret room and that if 
his own father had had anything of the sort, he cer¬ 
tainly would have known it.” 



36 


The Treamre of Bddm Place 


“But Grandpa was only a baby then.” 

“I asked Mother specially about that place over 
the kitchen,” Patty went on. “There’s a window 
there, you know. But she said it was just a walled- 
up garret and that Great-grandfather probably 
thought the house didn’t need an extra storeroom 
with such a big attic overhead.” 

“My mother didn’t know anything about it 
either,” I said. “I asked her where Great-grand¬ 
father hid the runaway slaves, and she said she 
didn’t know—in the attic perhaps.” 

Suddenly I felt Patty clutch me in the dark. 

“Listen!” she whispered. 

For a moment I couldn’t hear a thing. Then I 
knew what she meant—someone was creeping up 
the stairs. Someone was coming step by step, slowly 
and cautiously. We slipped out of bed and tiptoed 
to the door, afraid to move and yet not daring to 
stay still. The stealthy footsteps continued and, 
when they reached the top of the stairs, they paused 
outside our door. We held our breaths for an in¬ 
stant. And then we heard the sound of steps again 
—this time they went past our door and down the 
hall. 

“Let’s call someone,” I whispered. 



The Beginning of a Mystery^ 


37 


“It was probably Mrs. Fisher on her way to bed,” 
said Patty, with a little break in her voice. “Or 
John perhaps. I don’t want them to think we’re 
fraidy-cats.” 

“I don’t care what they think,” I answered. 

“I—” 

I never finished my sentence, for out of the still¬ 
ness came a cry—a very strange, peculiar cry. Then 
there was a crash. 

That decided us. Hand in hand, we raced down 
the hall. In no time at all we reached the house¬ 
keeper’s door, and began to pound on it and call 
to her. I tried the knob, but it seemed as though 
someone were holding the door on the other side. 

Then came Mrs. Fisher’s voice. “Go back to bed, 
girls!” She sounded a little scared herself and 
rather cross. 

“But we heard a noise,” quavered Patty, “and 
someone crying.” 

“Everything is all right. Now you must go back 
to your room at once.” 

After that, there was nothing to do but to retrace 
our steps. 



38 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


“It was only our imaginations anyway,” said 
Patty, and I agreed with her. 

Then, just as we turned to go into our room, we 
heard the cry again. 













CHAPTER IV 
THE WARNING 


E DIDN’T call Mrs. Fisher this time. Instead, 
we opened the door to our room and made a 
dive for the bed and burrowed deep into the bed¬ 
clothes. I don’t know how long we lay there, neither 
of us daring to say a word. Then I heard Patty 
giggle, and when I peeped out from beneath the cov¬ 
ers, I saw her pull the chain to the table lamp beside 
our bed. 

“Aren’t we silly?” she said. “There’s nothing 
that can hurt us, and if there were, what good would 
it do to hide under the covers?” 

Of course, I knew that this was true, and sud¬ 
denly I felt very brave again. And no sooner had I 
begun to feel this way than we heard more footsteps 
down the hall. I looked at Patty and Patty looked 
at me, and we both looked at the bedclothes. Then 
we pushed them away from us and sat up very 
straight. The footsteps paused before our door and 
we heard a low call. 

“Patty, dear, let me in!” 

It was Mrs. Fisher’s voice—soft and kind again, 
no longer cross. The next instant she opened the 


39 


40 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


door and came over and sat down on the side of the 
bed, her arm holding Patty close. 

“My poor lambs!” she said, and held out her other 
arm to me. 

All at once I seemed to realize I was very lonely 
for my mother and that no matter how sweet and 
beautiful a cousin Patty is, she’s not quite so com¬ 
forting at night. So I crawled across the bed and 
snuggled inside the hollow of Mrs. Fisher’s other 
arm. 

“I don’t see why you wouldn’t let us in,” said 
Patty in her straightforward way, looking up at 
her. 

“I don’t see why you were so cross.” I glanced 
up at her, too, and it seemed to me that she was look¬ 
ing very red for a person who had been so pale only 
a minute before. 

“It must have been because I was so tired,” the 
housekeeper explained haltingly, with long pauses 
between her words, “and a little—er—frightened 
myself—when you made that terrible racket on my 
door. I—I—I’m sure I didn’t mean to be cross.” 

She looked so sad and I felt so sorry for her— 
though I didn’t know why I should—that I put my 



The Warning 


41 


arms around her neck and whispered, “We know 
you didn’t.” 

That seemed to please her. “How would you like 
to have me make two gingerbread men tomorrow?” 
she asked. 

“Oh, oh!” I cried, clapping my hands softly, and 
“Oh, oh!” cried Patty. Then she added, remember¬ 
ing I guess, what her mother had told us about not 
causing any extra work, “We’d love them if they 
wouldn’t be too much trouble.” 

“No trouble at all,” she assured us. “Now you 
lie down and try to sleep, and I’ll sit here by you 
till you drop off.” 

The next morning we had quite a disappointment. 
This was the day that Peg Meredith’s father was 
to take our club for a ride in his new launch. After¬ 
wards, we were planning to have a picnic supper 
and go in bathing on the Kentucky side. 

I wonder if many of you know what a wonderful 
feeling a big river like the Ohio gives you. Of course, 
the ocean gives you a much grander feeling, if you 
know what I mean; but then it’s not so cozy, because 
you can’t see anything on the other side. It’s such 
fun to look at two states at once, and when I first 
moved to Fayetteville, I thought that this was one 




42 


The Treamre of Bdden Place 


of the nicest things about the town. It seemed quite 
thrilling to be able to drop into another state for 
supper, and then back home again by bedtime. 

Our club was called the Jolly Half Dozen, because 
as a general thing, we were such a jolly crowd. But 
as for Patty and me, we weren’t jolly when we 
looked out of the window that morning. No, indeed! 
There were big gray clouds in the east, and it looked 
as though it might rain any minute. 

We dressed quickly, and as we dressed we began 
to talk of our strange experience of the night be¬ 
fore. 

“I’m afraid we made Mrs. Fisher feel badly,” said 
Patty. “We probably woke her up, and she said that 
she was scared, too.” 

“Yes, and she was nice afterwards,” I answered. 
“I think it’s lovely of her to make those gingerbread 
men, don’t you?” 

“Tell you what, let’s be just as nice to her as we 
can to-day. I’m going down to the greenhouse right 
now and pick her a bouquet before breakfast,” 
Patty finished, as she combed the last tangle out of 
her red-gold curls. 

I followed her about ten minutes later. As I went 
into the dining room Mrs. Fisher was putting the 



The Warning 


43 


finishing touches to the breakfast table. She made 
some remark about the gingerbread men she would 
make for us as soon as she finished her work and 
smiled, and patted me on the shoulder, and seemed 
to do about everything she could to be nice to me. 

Patty walked in with her bouquet, but I saw right 
away that she wasn’t thinking of the flowers. She 
motioned to me behind the housekeeper’s back, and 
I knew that she wanted to see me alone—that she 
must have something very important to tell me. I 
started to follow her out into the hall, when Mrs. 
Fisher turned and saw us. 

“Sit right down, girls,” she said. “Breakfast is 
ready.” 

After that, of course, there was nothing to do 
but to sit down, though I was fairly bursting with 
impatience. Patty gave the flowers to Mrs. Fisher, 
who was very much pleased with them. Then she 
left us for a moment to get something from the 
kitchen. 

“What is it?” I whispered. 

But, evidently, Patty was afraid we might be 
overheard, because she began to talk to me in the 
deaf and dumb language. The housekeeper came 
back just then, bringing the bacon and hot biscuits. 



44 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


The minute she was out of the room again, Patty 
began once more to try to tell me something on her 
fingers. I had been learning the finger alphabet, but 
I didn’t know it very well yet. About all I could 
make out were the words “open” and “window,” 
and I didn’t see much sense to that. 

As we were eating, the rain began to come down. 
My cousin and I nearly always spent the rainy 
days in the roomy old attic at the top of the house, 
so I was not surprised to hear her whisper to me 
after we were through, “Go up to the attic and wait 
for me. I’ll be there in a minute.” 

But it was more than a minute before I saw 
Patty Morrison again. I climbed the steep stair¬ 
way that led to the old attic, with its spinning wheel 
in the corner, its discarded old furniture, its trunks 
holding bright shimmering gowns of another cen¬ 
tury, and the interesting old carved chest which 
overflowed with treasures on those rainy days that 
Aunt May found time to come upstairs and open it 
for us. 

As I waited, the rain poured on the roof in the 
fascinating pitter-patter that I loved to hear. And 
as it fell, it seemed to say, “Patty-hurry-up! Patty- 
hurry-up !” 



The Warning 


45 


Finally Patty came—very breathless and excited 
—and threw off the raincoat she had worn to protect 
herself from the shower. “It’s closed,” she an¬ 
nounced, in the very tone of voice she always uses 
when we play show together. 

“What’s closed?” I asked. For the life of me, I 
couldn’t make out what she was talking about. 

“The window over the kitchen, of course.” 

I was so disappointed that I couldn’t keep from 
showing it. “Well, was that why you were making 
all those signs at the breakfast table? I don’t see 
anything in that to get excited about. It always has 
been closed.” 

“But when I went after the flowers this morning, 
the window was open,” she insisted. “I tell you, 
Patsy Spaulding, that window never has been open 
since I can remember. That was what I was trying 
to make you understand at breakfast.” 

“Perhaps John raised it from the outside,” I sug¬ 
gested. 

“Why should he?” Patty demanded. “And how 
could he? None of our ladders are high enough to 
reach that window. “Don’t you see,” she went on, 
when I still looked dubious, “that place over the 
kitchen must be the mystery room? There’s no other 



46 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


place in this house where there could be a secret 
room anyway.” 

“And there must be an invisible door some place,” 
I cried, now as excited as my cousin, “and I bet it's 
in the north wall of Mrs. Fisher’s room. It must 
be, because her bedroom is right next to the place 
over the kitchen.” 

“We’ve got to go over every inch of that wall, 
Patsy, until we find the secret spring or whatever 
it is that will open the door for us.” 

“Let’s play we are detectives and solve the mys¬ 
tery,” I suggested. 

“Play we are detectives,” said Patty scornfully. 
“Why, we are detectives, you little goose. Let’s go 
over and sit on Great-grandmother Belden’s old 
sofa and think it all out, just as real—I mean other 
detectives would.” 

But here another surprise awaited us—there was 
no sofa. The old couch that always had stood under 
the east window was gone. 

“That’s funny,” said Patty. “That’s the sofa 
Mother is going to have Mr. Whiteside do over. Oh, 
I hope it hasn’t been stolen.” 

She stopped suddenly, and I followed her gaze to 



The Warning 


47 


a far, shadowy corner of the attic, where the old 
carved chest stood. “What is it?” I asked. 

“I thought I saw something move,” she whispered. 

I laughed. “Goosey! I don’t see a thing, and I 
don’t believe you did either.” 

Patty must have felt rather foolish, for she gave 
a queer little shaky laugh and said, “I guess my 
imagination must be working overtime, as old Mr. 
Whitney would say.” 

By this time the rain had stopped and, looking 
out of the east window, we saw that the sun was 
shining just as brightly as though there had never 
been any bad weather to tease us. Just then we 
heard a bell down on the first floor and—in another 
minute—Mrs. Fisher calling Patty to the phone. 

It was Peg Meredith on the wire to tell us that 
her father thought the day would be a fine one 
after all and for us to meet them at the boathouse 
at one o’clock. We had promised to take sandwiches 
as our part of the lunch, and I suggested that we 
not bother the housekeeper but that we make them 
ourselves. Mrs. Fisher was not in the kitchen, but 
we made sure that there was plenty of ham in the 
ice box, and strolled down to the grocery store to 
buy some bread. 



48 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


We were back in fifteen minutes and, while Patty 
was buttering the bread, I went to the ice box. But 
to my surprise, there was no ham. 

“That’s funny!” Patty exclaimed. “I wonder 
where Mrs. Fisher is.” 

“There’s nothing to do but buy some sandwich fill¬ 
ing,” I answered. “I’ll rim down to the store, while 
you ask John to pull us some fresh lettuce.” 

When I came back, Patty was talking away, at a 
great rate, to Mrs. Fisher in the kitchen. She was 
telling her about our picnic and—to my surprise— 
about our hollow tree post office and the letters and 
gifts we used to leave for each other there, before I 
came to Belden Place to stay. I was a little provoked 
about it for a minute—to think that Patty would 
tell the new housekeeper about it when we had al¬ 
ways kept it a secret from everybody, that is, every¬ 
body but our mothers. 

But the next minute I wasn’t provoked at all, for 
Mrs. Fisher was saying, “Sure, I think it a fine 
thing to do. What would you say if I left a little 
surprise for you there sometime?” 

“You mean our gingerbread men?” I asked. 

The housekeeper laughed pleasantly. “I’m not 
saying, but you’d better keep sharp eves on your 



The Warning 


49 


post office for a while. That sandwich filling’s all 
right, of course.” She changed the subject abruptly. 
“But how would you like some ham sandwiches, 
too?” 

She went to the ice box and opened the door. And 
there was the ham, just as we had seen it a half 
hour ago. 

There was no time to stop and figure it out then 
—we were in too much of a hurry to have lunch 
and get over to Mr. Meredith’s boathouse. Peg and 
her father and mother and the other girls—Jane 
and Barbara and Carolyn—were waiting for us; 
and we were so interested in the new launch and 
were soon having such a dandy time that we forgot 
all about the mystery at Belden Place. 

And no wonder, for we had a perfectly scrump¬ 
tious afternoon! We went swimming, and built cas¬ 
tles in the sand, and played that we were princesses 
wrecked on a desert island. That is, we were all 
princesses except Peg, who had to be the prince who 
rescued us. Then it seemed pretty hard for one 
prince to have five princesses on his hands, so my 
cousin and I turned into princes, too, and that made 
things just right. 

Jane said it was too bad that Patty had to be a 



50 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


prince because she had the golden-reddish curls that 
are considered so stylish for princesses. After we 
started to play, though, we changed our minds, for 
when Patty pretended to be a prince, she made us 
feel that she was one. 

Jane and Barbara and Carolyn hid behind a tree 
stump and were the princesses imprisoned in a high 
tower by a wicked ogre. Peg and Patty and I gal¬ 
loped up on our prancing chargers—we used long 
sticks for horses—and surrounded the castle. 

“We demand entrance, Sir Wicked Ogre,” Patty 
called. 

Only silence greeted her request. 

“Release these suffering princesses,” Patty cried 
again, dismounting from her horse and waving it 
in the air. (I mean, of course, that she was waving 
her stick in the air, for now she was pretending 
that it was a sword.) 

“Speak, thou cruel tyrant,” she went on. “Listen 
to the heart-rending cries of thy prisoners.” The 
princesses wailed very beautifully and wrung their 
hands like movie stars, but the ogre said not a word. 

“Be silent at thy peril,” Patty said, and at that 
all three of us began hammering at the walls of 
the castle. The princesses had to step back to keep 



The Warnmg 


51 


from being hit, as we whacked away at the tree 
stump. Then when we had gained admittance— 
at least, Patty said we had—the stump became the 
ogre and she challenged him to a gory duel. Peg 
and I sat down and watched her anxiously, as did 
the others—even Mr. and Mrs. Meredith. We knew 
that she was only battering away at a tree stump 
with a stick, but she did it so well she almost made 
us believe she really was a prince fighting for the 
lives of three fair maidens. 

“Ogre, thy end has come!” She rested one foot on 
top of the stump, in the very way a fairy tale hero 
always puts his foot on the chest of his vanquished 
foe. Peg and I hopped up, and each prince grabbed 
a princess, and led her out of the dark tower into 
the sunshine. By this time it was almost twilight, 
but then no fairy story ever ended that way. 

Mr. Meredith soon had a big fire blazing on the 
beach, and its cozy glow made our suppers taste 
twice as good. We toasted marshmallows for dessert, 
and sat around the fire, and told stories. 

“Patty,” said Mrs. Meredith, “I’m in charge of 
the program at the community house next Thursday 
for the benefit of the new day nursery the Women’s 
Club is starting. Would you give a reading?” 



52 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


“I’d love to, if—if you think I could do it well 
enough.” 

“I’m sure of it, after seeing you play the part of 
a prince this afternoon.” 

I could tell that Patty was thrilled, and I believe 
I was as tickled as she was. She had given readings 
at school lots of times, but she had never been on a 
big program before. I knew that a large crowd was 
expected at the Women’s Club Benefit and that some 
real musicians and entertainers from Arlington 
were going to perform; and I was awfully proud 
that Patty was my cousin. 

Night was almost upon us when we left the boat¬ 
house; but we assured Mr. Meredith that we could 
reach Belden Place before the dark caught us. I 
stopped when we came to our hollow tree post office. 

“Do you suppose Mrs. Fisher might have put 
something in this afternoon—our gingerbread men, 
perhaps?” I asked my cousin. 

“She might have,” Patty answered, and I put my 
hand inside. 

But it was not a gingerbread man that I drew 
out. It was a note. 

We opened it and saw that it was written in a 



The Warning 


53 


round, scrawling hand. Straining our eyes in the 
dim light, we managed to read: 

“Bewear. Do not come nere the hiden room. Be- 
wear.” 









CHAPTER V 

THE MYSTERIOUS BASEBALL BAT 

jP HAT settles that,” said Patty, folding up the 
note and slipping it into her pocket. “We’re 
going to find that hidden room to-morrow.” 

“If we can,” I reminded her. 

“We’ll simply have to. Do you think I’m going to 
let anybody tell me to stay out of a room in my own 
house? Somebody has been in that room and has 
come out to leave this note, and I think I know why.” 

She stopped in that tantalizing way she has when 
she begins to tell a secret, and I said, “For goodness 
sake, Patty, hurry up and tell me what you think.” 

“Well, I believe that somebody had discovered the 
treasure,” she said slowly. 

“You mean Great-grandmother’s lost jewels?” I 
interrupted. * 

“Yes, and that somebody is coming back for them 
and doesn’t want to have us prowling around in the 
meantime.” 

“But if he can’t use a ladder—” 

“He won’t need a ladder. He can go through the 
secret door, sometime when Mrs. Fisher isn’t in her 
room.” 


54 


The Mysterious Baseball Bat 


55 


“Then I suppose it’s up to us to find the door 
before he gets back,” I said, inclined to take my 
cousin’s view in the matter, since I had no better 
suggestion to offer. “Let’s not tell the housekeeper. 
Let’s have it for our own secret—just us two.” 

Patty was fussed. “I don’t suppose I should have 
told her about the post office. That was our secret, 
too. She was so kind, though, and looked so sad that 
I guess I wanted to cheer her up. Anyway, it all 
came out.” 

By this time we had reached Belden Place, and 
the housekeeper met us in the hall. “Did you have a 
good time?” she said, and when we answered, “Yes, 
indeed,” she added, “You’ll find your gingerbread 
men on the kitchen table.” 

I looked her straight in the eye, just as I imagined 
a real detective might. “We stopped at the hollow 
tree post office,” I said. “We thought you might have 
put the gingerbread men in there.” 

I expected her to blush or stammer or shift 
uneasily from foot to foot—or to do something or 
other to show she knew about that dreadful note— 
but she only shook her head. “No, I was so busy all 
afternoon that I just finished baking them. You 



56 


The Treasure Bdden Place 


keep right on watching your post office, though— 
you’ll find a surprise there yet.” 

And suddenly I found myself wishing to tell Mrs. 
Fisher all about the secret room and the mysterious 
warning, as Patty had told her about our hollow 
tree. But just then my cousin, who had hurried 
on to the kitchen, gave a little squeal. “Oh, Patsy, 
come here! These are the darlingest things you ever 
saw.” 

I was beside her in an instant and had picked a 
cinnamon drop off the coat of one of the gingerbread 
men, just to sample him. Then I nibbled a tiny bite 
off his heel where it wouldn’t show much and saved 
the rest of him for some other time. 

The next morning the sun was shining brightly; 
it was a perfectly glorious day to play outdoors. 
And that was exactly what the housekeeper sug¬ 
gested that we do when we went downstairs. 

And that was exactly what we didn’t want to do 
—we wanted to examine the north wall of Mrs. 
Fisher’s room. Every inch of that space would have 
to be gone over. We were sure that the secret door 
to the mystery room was there, and being sure of 
that much, we simply had to find it. While we 
dressed, we had been trying to decide which of us 



The Mysterious Baseball Bat 


57 


should ask the housekeeper if we could play in her 
room that morning. Neither of us was very anxious 
to do it, because it did seem a queer request to make. 
My cousin suggested that we draw straws, but since 
there weren’t any straws nearer than the broom in 
the kitchen, we had to think up another way of 
deciding it. 

“I have it,” I said. “The one of us who finishes 
dressing last will have to ask her.” 

This didn’t turn out to be a very good suggestion, 
so far as I was concerned. I thought because I had 
bobbed hair that I would be sure to get through 
first. So perhaps it served me right when Patty 
beat me—I never saw her get dressed so fast before. 

“What in the world shall I tell her?” I whispered, 
as we went down the broad stairway together. 

Patty grinned. “That’s up to you.” 

So you know how disappointed we must have been 
when Mrs. Fisher suggested that we play in the 
orchard that morning. 

“Please, we’d rather not,” I said. “You see, 
there’s something in the house we’d like to do.” 

But she was firm. “I told your mothers that I’d 
see that you had plenty of outdoor exercise. So I 
believe you’d better play in the orchard every morn- 



58 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


ing for a while. What, with your play house up in 
the big tree and all, I’d think you’d want to!” 

Of course, that settled it, because we had made 
such an extra-special promise that we’d mind and 
not ask any questions or beg or tease when Mrs. 
Fisher told us to do a thing. Of course, we loved 
our Peter Pan House and were anxious to get back 
to it and fix it up as we had planned—it was only 
that there were more important things to attend to 
now. 

As soon as we were out of the dining room, Patty 
whispered, “Never mind. We can finish Tom Saw¬ 
yer this morning and search for the mystery room 
after lunch.” 

This made me feel all good inside myself again, 
for as much as I wanted to discover that secret door, 
I also wanted to get back to Tom and Huck and find 
out what they did after they left the haunted house. 

“Let’s get the book and some cushions,” Patty 
went on, leading the way into the library, “and then 
we can ask Mrs. Fisher for a few of those oatmeal 
cookies. Say, Patsy, have you seen The Adventures 
of Tom Sawyer?” 

“It’s on the library table,” I answered, gathering 
up several sofa cushions from the window seat. 



The Mysterious Baseball Bat 


59 


“That’s what I thought, but it’s not here now.” 

“I laid it there yesterday, just before we left for 
Mr. Meredith’s boathouse.” 

“Well, that’s funny,” said my cousin for the third 
time in two days, as she pulled another book from 
one of the shelves. “I wonder what will disappear 
next. Do you think we should tell Mrs. Fisher?” 

But Mrs. Fisher didn’t give us a chance, because 
when we reached the kitchen she was nowhere to be 
found. So we helped ourselves to a plate of cookies 
and hurried out into the orchard. 

“Oh, dear,” I said, when we reached the tree 
house, “how are we ever going to climb up there, 
loaded down with all these things?” 

“We’ll have to call John to help,” said Patty. 

But when John came he had a better plan than 
that. He fastened a big market basket to the end 
of a stout rope, and tied the other end of the rope 
to a limb of the tree. And there was a regular pul¬ 
ley, into which we dumped our cushions and 
pulled them up into the tree house without a bit 
of trouble. 

When we asked the gardener about fastening a 
flower box to the railing, he pretended just at first 
to think it a very foolish idea. 



60 


The Treaswre 0 / Belden Place 


“What do you want to raise?” he asked. 
“Onions?” 

“Of course not.” I couldn’t help laughing. “We 
thought it would be nice to have a flower garden 
up in the tree tops. We’d take care of it ourselves.” 

“It would be too shady for most flowers,” he said, 
“but I reckon I could transplant some pansies. 
Would that suit you?” 

We followed John into the greenhouse and helped 
him fill a flower box with rich, black earth. After 
he had hauled it up into the Peter Pan House in the 
basket pulley and nailed it to the outside of the rail¬ 
ing—on the south side where we liked to pretend 
there was a window—he showed us how to put out 
the pansy plants. They were already in bloom and 
gave quite an air to the place. 

“Now I’m going to bring one of those rugs 
down from the attic, and everything will look beau¬ 
tiful,” said Patty. 

“What do you want with a rug?” asked John. “It 
would get dirty right away.” 

“But it’s an old rug we never use, and it would 
make everything so cozy.” 

“Well, I wouldn’t,” John went on. “Your mother 
wouldn’t like it.” 



The Mysterious Baseball Bat 


61 


Perhaps he was right, but I couldn’t help feeling 
that, for some reason or other, he didn’t want us to 
go into the house. 

Patty had brought along a copy of The Arabian 
Nights, and after the gardener left us we settled 
down to enjoy it. But we didn’t read much that 
morning. We were too busy puzzling over a few 
of the strange things that had happened and the odd 
way the housekeeper sometimes acted. And we were 
too taken up with thoughts of the exploring tour 
we expected to make that afternoon and of the secret 
door we hoped to find. We must have talked longer 
than we realized, because the sun was high in the 
sky when we saw Mrs. Fisher hurrying through the 
orchard. What surprised us was that she had on 
her hat and was carrying over her arm the shabby 
black coat she had worn the first day we saw her. 
She paused at the foot of our tree, a little out of 
breath and rather embarrassed, it seemed to us. 

“My brother and I must go to the city. I’m sorry 
to leave you here—” she hesitated— “to leave you 
here alone, but I’m sure you will be all right. We’ll 
not be away long.” 

“Oh, that will be all right,” said Patty politely. 

“Your lunch is ready and set out on the table.” 



62 


The Treamre of Bdden Place 


the housekeeper called and hurried away, as though 
she was afraid we might ask her a question she 
didn’t want to answer. 

It was lonely in the big dining room, with our 
places set at one end of the long table. “Why can’t 
we eat up in the Peter Pan House?” my cousin sug¬ 
gested. 

The idea of eating in the treetops, as Peter and 
Wendy had, appealed to me immensely. Mrs. Fisher 
had left a cold lunch for us, anyway, except for the 
hot' cocoa which we drank at once. Then we put 
the cold meat and the bread and butter and the to¬ 
mato salad on a tray and carried it into the orchard. 
We had no difficulty in hoisting our luncheon to the 
Peter Pan House in the basket pulley; but we had 
nothing to eat on when we got it there. 

“I’ll get my little table,” said Patty and rushed 
off to the house. But though the table was small— 
it was the one she had used for tea parties when she 
was just a little thing—it was too big to go into the 
basket. 

“If we had a clothesline to tie around the table, 
we could pull it up that way,” I said. 

“John will have one,” Patty answered, and led 



The Mysterious Baseball Bat 


63 


the way into the little room off the main greenhouse 
where he kept his tools and supplies. 

We found the rope, as we had expected, and we 
found a surprise, too. It was a baseball bat, with 
the initials “J. F.” cut into the handle. 

“What would John want with this?” I asked. 
“He’s too big to play ball.” 

“His last name isn’t Fisher, anyway,” my cousin 
said, looking at the initials. “It’s Mackey.” 

“Then whose bat is this?” 

“That’s what I intend to find out as soon as John 
comes home.” 

It was scrumptious, having our luncheon up in 
the treetops, and we decided we would do it often. 
I suggested that it would be fun to entertain our 
Jolly Half Dozen Club up there sometime—that is, 
if John thought the house were strong enough to 
hold six girls all at once. Perhaps it would be better 
to wait until our mothers came home, and could help 
us get things ready. We were sure that the girls 
would enjoy it. They could wear their play clothes, 
and for once we wouldn’t have to worry about keep¬ 
ing clean. Carolyn wasn’t very good at climbing 
trees—she was rather fat and roly-poly—but with 
the rest of us to help her, she could manage it. 



64 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


“I don’t believe Peter and Wendy ever had a bet¬ 
ter time than we’re having,” I said, kneeling before 
the little table, Japanese fashion, and buttering a 
piece of bread. 

“No,” said Patty, “and I’m sure they never had 
a more thrilling mystery to solve.” 








CHAPTER VI 
THE SECRET DOOR 


TIZ E WERE nearly through eating when Patty 
' ' looked at me accusingly. “Patsy Spaulding, 
you didn’t ask if we could play in Mrs. Fisher’s 
room this afternoon.” 

“I forgot everything about it,” I said, feeling 
awfully guilty. “But I don’t believe she’ll mind if 
we go in without asking. All we want to do is to 
examine the north wall.” 

“We certainly wouldn’t hurt anything,” said 
Patty. “I guess it will be all right.” 

I piled the dishes on the tray and set it carefully 
in the basket. When I saw all the crumbs we had 
dropped on the floor, I began to think John had been 
right about the rug. I wanted to go into the house 
and find a broom, but my cousin insisted that there 
was no sense in sweeping up a few crumbs. The 
birds would soon eat them, and enjoy the feast be¬ 
sides. She was as anxious as I was to keep the Peter 
Pan House looking spick and span, but if we brought 
up the broom and gave it a thorough cleaning twice 
a week, that would be enough. 


65 


66 


The Treaswre of Bdden Place 


“Do you think we really will find the jewels in 
the secret room?” I asked. 

Patty nodded and climbed down to the ground to 
take the basket which I slowly lowered. So I had 
to wait until I had climbed down after her before I 
asked my next question. 

“What do you suppose they will be like?” 

“I don’t know, but I’ve heard Mother say that 
they were very beautiful.” 

“I hope we find some pearls,” I said. “They’re 
so soft and creamy-looking, and I like them better 
than any other jewel.” 

“I hope we find some diamonds,” said Patty. 
“They look so much like stars.” 

“I hope we find some emeralds.” 

“I hope we find a topaz.” 

And we went on, making a regular game of our 
wishes, until we reached the kitchen door. 

It’s strange—the feeling a big empty house gives 
a person. I suppose it was because we knew the 
housekeeper was away that everything seemed so 
lonely. We decided that since we were going to use 
Mrs. Fisher’s room to “aid us in our explorations” 
(that was what Patty said) that the least we could 
do was to wash the luncheon dishes for her first. 



The Secret Door 


67 


Every board in the old kitchen seemed to creak, as 
we walked across the floor, and the dishes, rattling 
in the stillness, sounded like cannon crackers. Just 
why I don’t know, but I felt that something very ex¬ 
citing was about to happen and I wasn’t sure 
whether I wanted it to or not. 

“Everything’s so creepy,” I said. “I wonder if 
we hadn’t better wait until Mrs. Fisher comes back 
before we begin our search.” 

“Pooh!” said Patty. “An old house often seems 
this way. If you had lived here as long as I have, 
you wouldn’t think a thing about it.” 

But for all her boasting, I believe she felt a little 
shaky, too. Every move we made seemed to waken 
an echo in the old house; and when we climbed the 
broad, front stairway, each step seemed to have a 
spite against us—it creaked so loudly. My cousin 
kept insisting that there was no reason on earth, let 
alone at Belden Place, why we should be frightened 
and that, anyway, detectives had to be brave. 

When we opened the door into the housekeeper’s 
room, we wondered if all our plans hadn’t been for 
nothing. It was an awfully unromantic looking 
room, and it didn’t seem possible that there could 
be a secret door anywhere about. The north wall 



68 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


was perfectly blank, with no panels which looked 
as though they might open, and not even a picture 
where a spring might be hidden. There was a single 
piece of furniture against the wall—a heavy, old- 
fashioned dresser—and a door which Patty said 
opened into a clothes closet. 

"Let’s pull out that dresser,” I suggested. “I 
don’t see any other place where there could be a 
secret door.” But, though we went over every inch 
of the wall behind the heavy old piece of furniture, 
no door sprung open to reward our efforts. 

“We’d better go over the whole wall that way,” 
said Patty, as we rolled the dresser back into place. 
“We’re sure to find the spring if we do, for there’s 
no place else where it could be.” 

Evidently, she was wrong, because we worked for 
several hours without success. Once I was sure I 
heard a noise on the other side of the wall. I 
grabbed my cousin by the arm, ready to run, but 
she wouldn’t budge a step. She put her ear against 
the wall and listened and made me do the same thing. 
She was right—there wasn’t a sound—and I felt 
foolish. 

I don’t believe we missed a single spot of that 
north wall. We felt it and pressed it and knocked 



The Secret Door 


69 


it—and nothing happened. X never saw Patty so 
disappointed before, and I was feeling the same way. 

“It’s no use,” she said, blinking back the tears. 

She stopped suddenly, and this time she was the 
one who clutched me excitedly. There was a noise. 
Someone was climbing the stairs. The steps were 
coming down the hall now, and presently they 
stopped outside the very room that we were in. 
Quick as a wink, Patty opened the closet door and 
dragged me inside with her. She closed the door 
after us, just as the door of the room opened and 
someone walked inside. 

It was too dark in the closet to see each other, and 
I was afraid we might be overheard if we whispered. 
But I know that Patty and I were thinking the same 
thing that minute—the person, who had left the note 
for us in our hollow tree post office, had come back 
for the treasure hidden in the mystery room. If we 
only dared peek, perhaps we could find out where the 
secret door really was. 

The next minute we heard Mrs. Fisher talking 
to her brother. I was so relieved I almost giggled. 
“I feel so foolish,” Patty whispered. “What will 
Mrs. Fisher think when she finds us hiding in her 
closet?” 



70 


The Treamre of Belden Place 


“We’d better tell her right away,” I whispered 
back and started to get up from where I had been 
sitting on the floor. 

As my hand touched the wall, I heard a little 
snapping noise, and I had the strangest feeling. It 
seemed as though the wall behind us were fading 
away into nothingness. 

I turned and looked, and found that now I could 
see quite plainly. Yes, it was moving. The back 
wall of the closet was swinging outward—away 
from us. 

We had found the secret door to the mystery room. 













CHAPTER VII 

JIMMY 

J^N a moment we forgot all about Mrs. Fisher in 
her room; we forgot about John the gardener. 
We had thoughts only for the mystery room that 
opened before us. We stepped inside, and there— 
like Silas Marner—we saw what looked like gold. 

And then—like Silas Marner, too—we saw that 
the gold was the soft curly hair of a little girl. 

We slipped over to the rude crib where she lay 
sleeping. “Oh, isn’t she just too good to be true?” 
whispered my cousin, who had always wanted a 
baby sister more than anything in the world, and, 
for that matter, so had I. 

The child couldn’t have been more than a year 
and a half old, but her hair was quite thick and 
formed in cunning little ringlets all over her head. 
I could hardly keep from kissing her, she looked so 
cuddly lying there. But though I didn’t know very 
much about babies, I knew one thing—you must 
never wake them up when they are asleep. 

But that was only our first surprise! The next 
thing we saw was the old sofa we had missed from 
the attic the day before, and it was made up with 


71 


72 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


sheets and blankets, as though someone had used it 
for a bed. On top the covers was a copy of The Ad¬ 
ventures of Tom Sawyer, and it was a library book 
just like ours. 

And then we saw the boy. He was about ten years 
old, and he was standing over in a far corner of the 
room. His hands grasped the back of a chair, and 
he was staring at us in a mute, appealing way. We 
knew at a glance that he was frightened, for his 
freckled face had gone quite pale. 

Patty tried to put him at his ease at once. 

“What’s your name?” she asked. 

“Jimmy Fisher,” he answered, his voice so low 
we could hardly hear him. 

“Oh,” I cried, “I didn’t know Mrs. Fisher had a 
boy.” 

“You mustn’t blame Mom,” he said quickly. “The 
Home couldn’t take us for another month and we 
just had to have some place to stay.” 

“Are you going to live at an orphanage?” Patty’s 
voice sounded flat and disappointed. The boy nod¬ 
ded. “And is your little sister going with you?” 

“Yes,” he answered, and looked as though he 
wanted to cry, but being a ten-year-old boy, he 
couldn’t. 



Jimmy 


73 


“What’s her name?” I asked. 

“Jean.” 

“She’s so cunning!” exclaimed Patty. “I’ll be 
very careful not to wake her up. May I just barely 
touch her, Jimmy?” 

“I don’t guess it makes so much difference if she 
does make a noise,” he said, “now that you know 
we’re here. Sometimes I just couldn’t keep her 
quiet.” 

“We haven’t heard anything since night before 
last,” I answered. “But then we haven’t been in 
the house much, except at night, and our room is 
pretty far from yours.” 

Jimmy seemed almost at ease by this time, and 
now he grinned. “That was the night we came,” 
he answered. “A neighbor in Arlington—that’s 
where we used to live—had been keeping us for a 
few days. Then Uncle John went after us and 
brought us here. Jean cried as we went through 
the hall, and I had to go and stumble over a chair.” 

“Was that the reason your mother wouldn’t let 
us in, when we pounded on her door? Were all of 
you inside?” 

“Yes, and poor Mom was worried, too. She 
thought we were done for.” 



74 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


All this time Patty had been over by the crib, 
feasting her eyes on that darling baby, and I don’t 
suppose she could resist any longer, for she picked 
the little thing up and held her in her arms. As 
might have been expected, Jean woke up. She saw 
right away that Patty was a stranger and, with a 
little cry, held out her arms to Jimmy. But Patty 
only held her tighter, and that made the baby cry 
right out loud and her mother in the next room 
heard her. 

It must have been a terrible shock to Mrs. Fisher 
when she walked through the closet to the mystery 
room and found us there. Her face went white, 
just as Jimmy’s had, and she almost staggered over 
to the old sofa. She buried her face in her hands, 
and there was the most dreadful silence for a 
minute. Then she raised her head and called 
brokenly, “John, oh, John!” 

When the gardener walked in and discovered us, 
poor fellow, he seemed about flabbergasted, as Mr. 
Whitney would say. He was so astonished that it 
would have been funny, if he hadn’t been so dis¬ 
tressed about it, too. 

“I’ll be jiggered!” he exclaimed, and walked over 
and laid his hand awkwardly on his sister’s shoulder. 



Jimmy 


75 


“You mustn’t blame her none,” he said. “It was 
my idea.” 

“I was simply desperate,” moaned the house¬ 
keeper. “Oh, Patty, what will your mother say?” 

“Let’s all go down to the library,” my cousin sug¬ 
gested tactfully, and with that wonderful poise that 
always made me feel so proud of her. “Please, Mrs. 
Fisher, may I carry the baby? I’ll be very careful.” 

We all trooped downstairs, and there were many 
explanations. But John was always interrupting 
his sister, and the housekeeper was always inter¬ 
rupting John, and Jean was always interrupting 
everything, because she was so sweet that we’d have 
to stop and play with her every once in a while. So 
it took quite a while before we knew the whole story, 
but in the main this was what we learned. 

Poor Mrs. Fisher, after the death of her husband, 
had found that she could not get a situation because 
of her two children. It seemed that nobody wanted 
a housekeeper with a ten-year-old boy and a baby 
girl. She tried her best to keep them with her, but 
after a while she didn’t have any money left and she 
couldn’t find a position. John sent her all he could, 
but that wasn’t enough, and besides Mrs. Fisher 
didn’t feel that it was right for her younger brother. 



76 


The Treasure of Belden Plow 


who wasn’t much more than a boy himself, to have 
such a burden. That was what had made her decide 
to put the children in a Home, though the thought 
of having them away from her just about broke her 
heart. 

There was a very nice orphanage, kept up by some 
society in Arlington, where she had been living; but 
the matron couldn’t possibly make room for the 
Fisher children before another month. Then John’s 
letter had come, saying that my aunt needed a new 
housekeeper and that the family was to be away for 
several weeks. 

“I know I should have asked Mrs. Morrison if it 
was all right for me to have the children here while 
she was away,” said Mrs. Fisher, “but so many 
people had refused me that I didn’t dare. I knew 
they wouldn’t hurt the furniture or anything like 
that, so I didn’t think it would do anybody any harm, 
if I brought them without asking.” 

“Was that why you didn’t want to stay when you 
found that Patsy and I were to be here?” my cousin 
asked. 

The housekeeper nodded. “Yes. But John had 
discovered that hidden room, and he thought we 
could manage that way. But I soon saw we couldn’t.” 



Jimmy 


77 


Mrs. Fisher had sent us to the orchard that morn¬ 
ing, so that Jimmy and Jean could come out of their 
cramped quarters for a while. Then she had realized 
that she couldn’t keep on getting us out of the way 
for a whole month; and she and John had gone to 
the city that afternoon to ask the matron to recon¬ 
sider and take the children right away. 

“But she says she just can’t do it,” the house¬ 
keeper finished dully. 

“Please don’t worry about it,” Patty begged her. 
“I’ll write mother to-night, and tell her everything, 
and ask her if Jimmy and Jean can’t stay right here 
until the end of the month.” 

But, though my cousin told Mrs. Fisher not to 
worry, she sounded rather worried herself. 

“I think John was mighty smart to discover that 
mystery room,” I said, “when our mothers and even 
our grandfather didn’t know anything about it.” I 
wanted to change the subject, for one thing, but I also 
was curious to know how he had done it. 

John blushed at this praise. Blushing was a habit 
that the whole family seemed to have. 

“I discovered it sorta by accident,” he said. “No 
one had ever used the room, so I kept my narcissus 
bulbs there, in the closet, till they began to sprout. 



78 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


One morning I found that a mouse had been nibbling 
my bulbs and, seeing a hole in the baseboard, I poked 
in a stick. 

“Oh, what happened?” Patty asked. 

“Why, the whole back of the closet flew open.” 

“But there is no baseboard in the closet now,” I 
said. 

“It came up easily and I took it out, so my sister 
could get to the baby quicker, if she had to.” 

All this time poor Jimmy had been sitting over in 
the corner, not saying a word. He was timid, but for 
all that, he was such an interesting looking boy that 
I knew he would be lots of fun to play with. 

“Come on, Jimmy,” I cried. “Let’s go out in the 
orchard and play ‘I Spy.’ ” 

His big gray eyes lighted up at once, and I knew 
he must have been very lonely during the last two 
days. We played for about an hour before we heard 
John calling us to dinner. 

“Mom had a hard time feeding us,” said Jimmy. 
“She got everything ready down in the cellar, so no¬ 
body would see her. Of course, she expected to pay 
for what we ate.” 

“Patsy,” said my cousin, “that’s what became of 
the ham yesterday. And Jimmy had the sofa out of 



Jimmy 


79 


the attic and he had borrowed our copy of Tom 
Sawyer, and it was his baseball bat we found.” 

“Yes,” I answered, “but I still feel worried about 
that note we found in our hollow tree post office.” 

Jimmy began to get red. “You mustn’t blame that 
on Mom,” he said. “She didn’t know I wrote it.” 

Patty and I looked at him in astonishment, and 
Jimmy struggled on with his confession. “I got 
awfully tired, up in that little room, so yesterday 
morning I went up in the attic to play. Purty soon, 
you girls came and I had to hide—and one of you al¬ 
most saw me. I—I—heard everything you said about 
hunting the secret room and I didn’t know what 
would happen to Jean and me if you found it. I 
didn’t want to bother Mom about it, so I wrote the 
note to try to scare you.” 

“How did you know anything about our post 
office?” I asked. 

“When you took that launch ride, Mom let us go 
downstairs to play. She told me about the hollow 
tree near the grocery store and how to get there, be¬ 
cause she wanted me to take some gingerbread men 
down there before you got home. She didn’t get them 
baked in time, but I slipped out anyway and left the 
note.” 



80 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


“I’ll say this for you, Jimmy Fisher,” Patty told 
him. “You don’t know how to spell.” 

I was rather surprised at myself for not feeling 
mad at Jimmy for writing that scary note to us. But 
I just felt sorry for him instead. I guess that my 
cousin did, too, because she went on to tell him that 
though he wasn’t a good speller, she just knew he 
would make a dandy playmate, and that it would be 
more fun to play with Jean than with all the dolls in 
all the world. 

“Oh, we’ll have a wonderful time,” she finished. 

“Yes, if your Mom will let us stay.” We could tell 
that he was awfully in earnest about it—he looked 
so wistful and so sad. “Oh, Patty, do you suppose 
she will?” 









It was fun the next morning showing Jimmy 
over Belden Place. 








CHAPTER VIII 


NEW FRIENDS 

jpATTY wrote to Aunt May that night, and it 
wasn’t an easy letter to write either. We didn’t 
think that Mrs. Fisher had done anything wrong in 
bringing Jimmy and Jean without asking, and we 
didn’t see how our mothers could have the hearts to 
blame her. Still, when it came to putting it right 
down on paper, we had a harder time making a satis¬ 
factory explanation than we had counted on. 

“Dear Mother,” my cousin wrote. “We have had 
the most thrilling adventure. We found the secret 
room right over the kitchen—and guess who was 
living in it! Mrs. Fisher’s boy, Jimmy, and his little 
sister, Jean.” 

“I don’t believe that would do, Patty,” I said, 
when she looked up at me to see what I thought. 
“It’s too—too sudden.” 

“I guess you’re right.” She tore up the sheet and 
pulled out a fresh one. “Oh, what can I say—that 
the housekeeper has had a very sad life and that she 
brought her children here to stay until the Orphans’ 
Home could take them?” 


81 


82 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


“That’s better, but it’s not quite right yet. What 
we need is a—a—” 

“A what?” asked Patty. 

“A dip-lo-mat-ic opening.” I finally got the words 
out. I had heard Daddy say that expression often 
when he was getting ready to make an important 
speech; but when I tried to say it myself, the words 
didn’t come so easily. 

“What’s that?” asked Patty. 

“Well,” I tried to explain, “I think we should try 
to prepare them before we break the news. You 
might write, ‘Dear Mother: What I am about to say 
may surprise you; but please read my letter through 
before forming an opinion.’ ” 

“That sounds fine,” said Patty, hurrying to get it 
down on paper. “What shall I say next, Patsy?” 

“Mrs. Fisher has had a very sad life,” I went on 
dictating, “and she couldn’t find a position because 
she had a ten-year-old boy and baby girl whom no¬ 
body wanted. They are going to a Home next month, 
but until then there is no place for them to live. So 
the housekeeper brought them to stay at Belden Place 
and hid them in the secret room—” 

“But Patsy,” my cousin interrupted, “I haven’t 
said anything about the secret room yet” 



New Friends 


83 


“That’s all right. You won’t have to write the 
letter over. You can just put it in a footnote, as they 
do in our school books.” 

So Patty drew a star after the words, “secret 
room,” and then she drew another star at the bottom 
of the page, and after it she told about the important 
discovery we had made. 

The letter got harder and harder as we went along. 
Finally, we finished it by saying that though we knew 
the whole affair sounded rather queer, everything 
was really all right, because we loved Mrs. Fisher, 
and Jimmy was a nice boy, and Jean was simply the 
darlingest baby we had ever seen. 

“Thank goodness, that’s done.” My cousin stamped 
the letter and laid it on the dresser ready to be posted 
the next morning. “I don’t believe I ever could have 
written it, if you hadn’t helped me, Patsy.” 

As we undressed and crept into bed, I kept think¬ 
ing of all the important things that had happened 
in one day. At bedtime the evening before we hadn’t 
discovered the secret room, and we hadn’t even 
known about Jean and Jimmy. 

“Did you notice what a coarse little dress Jean 
was wearing?” I asked. “A pretty baby like that 
ought to have some pretty clothes.” 



84 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


Patty was thoughtful for a minute, then quite sud¬ 
denly she said, “Why can’t she have them? There’s 
a whole chest filled with my baby things up in the 
attic.” 

“Did your mother save them?” 

“Lots of them. I know she won’t mind if I give 
some of them to Jean.” 

That was the beginning of our plans for our sur¬ 
prise party the next day. There were all sorts of 
things up in the attic that could be used for Jean— 
Patty’s baby crib and some of her old playthings. 
We decided to get them together and put them in 
Mrs. Fisher’s room while she was preparing lunch. 
Afterwards we’d slip upstairs again and when she 
opened her door, we’d shout, “Surprise!” 

It was fun the next morning showing Jimmy over 
Belden Place. He had seen something of the grounds 
the afternoon our Jolly Half Dozen Club went over 
to Kentucky. But that wasn’t like having us show 
him all the points of interest—the terrace where we 
coasted in the winter, the grapevine swing in the 
orchard, the marten and wren houses, and the foun¬ 
tain where two stone children held up a stone um¬ 
brella to protect themselves from the water that 



New Friends 


85 


rolled off the sides of the parasol in little wiggling 
streams. 

It was funny about Jimmy. He didn’t seem at 
all timid after he became acquainted, and already 
it seemed as though we had known him for a long, 
long time. But it wasn’t until we showed him the 
gardener’s cottage that we saw just what a lonely 
time he must have had of it since his father died. 

“Gee,” he said, “wouldn’t it be grand to live there? 
Wouldn’t it be dandy to have a home like that?” 

Patty and I looked at each other behind his back 
—we both were surprised. True, the honeysuckle 
vine over the front porch gave the house a very 
homey air, and it would have been a cunning enough 
little place, if it hadn’t been so run down. Still, we 
couldn’t see why Jimmy should go into such rap¬ 
tures over it. 

“That’s the gardener’s cottage,” Patty explained. 
“Your Uncle John couldn’t use it, and Mother hasn’t 
bothered about having it fixed up. It needs lots of 
repairs before anyone ever could live there, and it’s 
been less expensive for him to stay at the house.” 

Jimmy didn’t say another word about it. But he 
looked awfully wistful, and somehow Patty and I 
just knew he was thinking how much nicer it would 



86 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


be to live witJi his mother and sister in a real home 
spelled with a little h, than to go to a big Home 
spelled with a capital. 

“We haven’t told you about our surprise yet.” I 
was eager to change the subject. I wanted to see if 
I couldn’t bring a glad look back into those big gray 
eyes. 

My cousin stopped short. “Why, Patsy Spauld¬ 
ing! It won’t be much of a surprise now.” 

I couldn’t tell her, with Jimmy right there beside 
us, why it was I had given the secret away like that. 
So I said instead, “I don’t see why he shouldn’t know 
about it. The surprise isn’t for him.” 

Jimmy looked embarrassed. “If it’s anything you 
don’t want to tell me, you needn’t.” 

“I suppose we might as well,” Patty answered. 
“You may be able to help us.” 

“Of course, he can,” I said. “We never could get 
that crib down from the attic by ourselves.” 

When we told Jimmy of our plans, his gray eyes 
shone. “Oh, gee whillikins,” he said, “won’t Mom 
be tickled? And Jean—say, I’ve always wondered 
what she would look like all dolled up.” 

He was so happy about it that Patty and I looked 
at each other a second time behind his back. We 



New Friends 


87 


were glad now that we had let him in on the secret 
and of one thing we were certain—we were going 
to like Jimmy Fisher very much. 

We hadn’t finished our tour of Belden Place— 
why, we hadn’t even visited the Peter Pan House— 
but after that nothing held out any prospect of 
pleasure but the attic. Jimmy was simply beside 
himself with joy when Patty opened the drawers 
of the chest and pulled out several dainty little baby 
dresses. She found a blue silk coat, too, and a crepe 
de Chine bonnet to match, with three tiny ruffles 
edged with lace. 

“I hope this fits her,” I said. “I want her to wear 
it when I take her picture with my new camera.” 

The old attic yielded other treasures, too—a teddy 
bear put carefully to bed in the bottom drawer of 
the chest three years before, a little blue enameled 
crib, a high chair and a baby carriage. We had a 
hard time getting all the things down the steep attic 
stairs, especially the crib; and once we thought we 
would have to call John to come and help us. We 
managed without him, though, because we wanted 
him to be surprised, too. The housekeeper was 
down in the kitchen getting lunch, so—although we 
made quite a lot of noise—we were in no danger of 



88 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


being discovered. Jean was with her mother, and 
John, of course, was out in the greenhouse. 

“I wish we could wash these,” said Patty, laying 
the little dresses out on the bed. “But I’m sure Mrs. 
Fisher would rather do it herself.” 

I sniffed the lovely fragrance of the sheets I was 
laying on the crib, glad that bedclothes were in no 
need of an immediate laundering, and folded a baby 
blanket across the foot of the bed. The teddy bear 
I set up in one corner, ready for Jean to play with. 

“What’s the matter with you youngsters?” the 
housekeeper asked when we went down to lunch. 
“You look as though you’re up to something.” 

“We are,” I answered. “Something nice.” 

Luckily, for our plans, Mrs. Fisher consented 
when we asked if we could take Jean upstairs and 
play with her awhile. Our only disappointment was 
that Jimmy’s uncle had an errand for him to do and 
he couldn’t come with us. We put the baby in her 
crib and pulled up the sides, so that she couldn’t 
possibly fall out, and you should have seen her grab 
for that teddy bear. She gurgled over it and put a 
chubby finger on one of the puppy-dogs on the baby 
blanket and said, “Pretty,” again. 



New Friends 


89 


“I hope Jimmy gets back in time to shout, ‘Sur¬ 
prise,’ with us,” I said. 

And, as if in answer to my wish, the door opened 
and Jimmy popped in. “Hurry! Mom’s coming up 
the stairs,” he said and disappeared into the closet. 

Patty and I crouched down on the farther side of 
the bed; and when Mrs. Fisher came in all she could 
see for a minute were the dresses, spread out for her 
inspection, and Jean playing in her blue enameled 
crib. Then the closet door flew open and my cousin 
and I jumped up, and three voices yelled, “Sur¬ 
prise.” 

We had hoped, of course, that Mrs. Fisher would 
be pleased, but we had had no idea how very happy 
we would make her. She fingered the little dresses, 
as though she loved them, and wheeled the crib 
nearer the window and ran her hand over the soft 
folds of the blanket. 

“You’re the two dearest girls in the world,” she 
told us. 

“Jimmy helped us a lot,” I said. 

“Sure, I did,” he said. “They never could have 
gotten that crib down the steps without a man’s 
help.” 

We all laughed at the funny way he strutted 



90 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


across the room, and Patty protested when Mrs. 
Fisher said she could only take the things as a loan. 
But whether they were being loaned or given to her, 
Jean didn’t care, for she kept on laughing and gurg¬ 
ling and trying to put the teddy bear into her mouth. 

“May we take her riding outside in the baby car¬ 
riage?” I asked. 

“You certainly may, after she has had her nap,” 
her mother answered. 

Mrs. Fisher wanted her to have one of her new 
dresses to wear, so she selected a silk one and washed 
and ironed it while it was still wet. Jean looked 
adorable in it, and my cousin and I were as proud 
as peacocks as we wheeled the carriage down the 
street and everyone stopped and looked at the baby. 

It was almost as good as having little sisters of 
our own. 



CHAPTER IX 


SPAULDING, MORRISON AND FISHER, 
DETECTIVES 

JT WAS so much fun to play with Jean that it 
wasn’t until the next morning that we got 
around to showing Jimmy the Peter Pan House. He 
was quite impressed, especially when we hoisted our 
cushions up into the tree by means of the basket pul¬ 
ley. 

“This is where I’m going to come to write my 
stories,” I said, after we had made ourselves com¬ 
fortable. 

“Patsy is going to be an author when she gets 
big,” my cousin explained, “and I’m going to be an 
actress.” 

“She’s almost an actress now,” I said. “She takes 
part in school plays, and she’s going to give a read¬ 
ing at the Women’s Club Benefit for the new day 
nursery.” 

“Yes, I am, if I ever find anything to read,” said 
Patty, a worried little frown puckering her eyes. 
“None of the poems I already know will do.” 

“What will you do when you grow up, Jimmy?” 
I asked. 


91 


92 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


Jimmy looked embarrassed. “You won’t laugh?” 

“Of course not. We told you, didn’t we?” 

“Then—well—I want to be an artist.” 

“I think that’s splendid,” said Patty. “When I’m 
an actress, you can paint my portrait.” 

“And you can illustrate my stories,” I added. 

Jimmy shook his head. “No,” he said, “I want 
to paint scenery—things like that river over there.” 

He jerked his thumb in the direction of the Ohio 
—smooth, glassy, and majestic looking, with the 
trees on the Kentucky side nodding to us in a friend¬ 
ly way, just like folks. The gesture itself was 
awfully unromantic, but never had I seen anyone’s 
face so radiant as Jimmy’s was that minute. He 
took a piece of drawing paper from his pocket and 
unfolded it. 

“Why,” I gasped, looking at the water color sketch 
he held out to me, “it looks like the Ohio River.” 

“It is the Ohio River,” said Patty. “It’s—beau¬ 
tiful, Jimmy. It—it—makes me have a little thrilly 
feeling down inside of me.” 

Jimmy’s eyes were shining. “That’s why I painted 
it,” he said. “The river always makes me feel— 
well, like you said, you know.” 

“Won’t we be proud of you when you get to be a 



Spaulding, Morrison and Fisher, Detectives 


93 


great painter,” I cried. “But, of course, you’ll have 
to go to art school first and—” 

I stopped, for the light had died out of Jimmy’s 
face. I knew I must have said something I had no 
business saying, but I couldn’t imagine what it was. 

“Does it cost a lot—to go to art school?” he asked. 

So that was the trouble. If Jimmy had to go to 
an orphan’s home, there probably wouldn’t be any 
money for his education after he finished public 
school. I was embarrassed, but my cousin, as usual, 
seemed to know exactly what to do. 

“I suppose it does cost a great deal,” she said, 
“but I should think you could earn the money your¬ 
self.” 

“I used to earn money when we lived in Arling¬ 
ton,” he said, “but I always gave it to Mom. She 
didn’t like to take it—but—you see, she—had to.” 

“I tell you,” Patty suggested, “let’s all three start 
to earn money to pay our way through college. It 
will be fun—all doing it together, and we have near¬ 
ly a month before Jimmy has to go to the Home.” 
My cousin was thinking fast. “Why, we could form 
a regular company. Wouldn’t Spaulding, Morrison 
and Fisher sound fine?” 



94 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


“Sure,” I said. “It sounds fine, but what could 
our company do?” 

“Don’t be so impatient, Patsy Spaulding. Can’t 
you see I’m trying to think?” She held up her hand. 
“Please don’t say a word just for a second. I have 
an idea by the tail feathers now and I don’t want it 
to get away.” 

I giggled. That was the sort of thing that Mr. 
Whitney was always saying, and it was funny to 
hear Patty try to imitate him. 

“I have it!” she cried suddenly. “Spaulding, 
Morrison and Fisher will find Great-grandmother 
Belden’s lost jewels.” 

“That wouldn’t be earning money,” I objected. 
“We couldn’t sell heirlooms that have been in the 
family for generations, even if we found them.” 

“There might be something in it for Jimmy any¬ 
way. I’ve heard Mother say that a reward was 
offered for their recovery when they were lost, and 
I bet she’d be so tickled if Jimmy helped us find 
them, that she’d give him a reward herself. And 
your mother would, too.” 

Jimmy was all interest now. “When did your 
grandma lose her jewelry?” he asked. 

“It wasn’t our grandmother who lost them,” 



Spaulding, Morrison and Fisher, Detectives 


95 


Patty explained. “It was our Great-grandmother 
Patricia Belden—the one that Patsy and I were 
named for. And the jewels were lost years and years 
ago, not very long after the Civil War.” 

“I don’t see how we can ever find them, if your 
great-grandma couldn’t.” 

“Well, of course, it will take some very good detec¬ 
tive work,” my cousin said gravely. “I have an idea 
—instead of being a regular business company, let’s 
call ourselves Spaulding, Morrison and Fisher, 
Detectives.” 

“Yes, let’s!” Jimmy and I cried, almost together. 
Then he added, “But, say, after you girls have been 
so nice to me—I—I wouldn’t want a reward for 
helping you.” 

I suggested that we really should incorporate. I 
didn’t understand exactly what that meant, but we 
knew that lots of firms did and we wanted to be 
business-like. I climbed down from the tree and 
ran into the house for ink and paper, so that we 
could draw up the articles of incorporation, as Dad¬ 
dy always called them. 

In Great-grandfather Belden’s old Sheraton desk 
in the library, I found the paper, two pens and a 
bottle of black ink. Then, upstairs in the room I 



96 


The Treasv/re of Belden Place 


shared with my cousin, I came across some red ink. 
I had to giggle to myself when I thought of the use 
we would make of it and of how surprised Patty 
and Jimmy would be. 

I passed through the kitchen on my way out, and 
Mrs. Fisher stopped me. “How would you like some 
lemonade?” she asked. 

We were beginning to find out that that was one 
of the nice things about Jimmy’s mother—she was 
always thinking up the most surprising little sur¬ 
prises. I squealed right out loud, I was so tickled, 
and told Mrs. Fisher what a dear we thought she 
was. She arranged a tray, with three glasses and 
the pitcher of lemonade; and I put my pen and ink 
and paper on the tray, too, and carried it out to the 
Peter Pan tree. 

“Look what I have!” I called. “Hurry and let 
down the basket.” 

My, that lemonade tasted good, and the oatmeal 
cookies had just come from the oven and were still 
warm. We spilt some of the lemonade in pulling 
the basket up, but there was plenty to go around 
anyway. 

“What’s that red ink for?” Patty asked, still 
munching a cooky. 



Spaulding, Morrison and Fisher, Detectives 


97 


“Just wait and see,” I told her, dipping one of 
the pens into the black ink. I knew that I had her 
feeling awfully curious. 

“We, the undersigned,” I wrote, “do hereby form 
the company of Spaulding, Morrison and Fisher, 
Detectives, and declare ourselves incorporated.” 

“Oh, is that all there is to it?” Jimmy sounded 
disappointed. 

I shook my head. “I’m not at all sure how it’s 
done, but I think we should have a pledge of some 
sort, even if the grown-up firms don’t. We might 
pledge ourselves to neither eat nor sleep until we find 
the jewels.” 

Patty laughed. “That’s too risky!” 

Jimmy thought so, too, and we were sure that 
Mrs. Fisher never would consent anyway; so I sim¬ 
ply wrote: “We hereby pledge ourselves to find the 
jewels lost by Patricia Belden.” 

“Now,” I said, “where’s the red ink? We’re going 
to sign our names in blood.” 

Patty and Jimmy laughed so hard that if it hadn’t 
been for the railing around the Peter Pan house, 
I’m sure they would have fallen off. I told them I 
didn’t see anything so funny about it; the ink was 
just the color of blood and lots more practical. They 



98 


The Treamre of Belden Place 


kept right on giggling, but they signed their names 
all right. Afterwards, when we told Mr. Whitney 
about it, he declared that the old-fashioned pirates 
certainly could have learned a thing or two from 
us. And he laughed, too, till he almost fell off the 
high stool where he was sitting. 

After our articles of incorporation were signed, 
the talk turned again to Great-grandmother’s jewels. 
Of course, Jimmy wanted to know the whole story; 
so we told him how they had disappeared very mys¬ 
teriously and how we happened to start to search for 
them. 

“Our mothers didn’t know anything about a hid¬ 
den room,” I said, “so we called it the mystery room 
and started to hunt for it. We thought we might 
find the jewels there.” 

“You know the rest.” Patty took up the story. 
“We found the room—it’s the one back of your 
mother’s, the one you’ve been using.” 

“Gee!” he exclaimed. “I think you girls are aw¬ 
fully smart!” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” said my cousin gloomily. 
“There weren’t any jewels there, and about every¬ 
thing that Patsy and I had figured out was wrong. 



Spaulding, Morrison and Fisher, Detectives 


99 


We discovered the secret door, of course, but all we 
found was just an ordinary room.” 

Suddenly, Jimmy seemed almost bursting with 
some wonderful secret. He really did—that’s the 
only way to describe him. “Just think,” he said, 
“I saw a real treasure with my own eyes and didn’t 
know it.” 

“Jimmy Fisher, what are you talking about?” 

But he seemed determined to string us along for 
a while. “Did you say it was just an ordinary 
room?” He paused in the tantalizing way he must 
have picked up from Patty. “Well, I’ve found some¬ 
thing that may make you change your minds.” 

“Don’t tease us,” I begged. “What is it that 
you’ve found?” 

“If you want to know that,” he answered, “you’ll 
have to come up to the mystery room and see.” 



CHAPTER X 


THE LITTLE OLD HORSEHAIR TRUNK 

jpATTY shinned down the gnarled old tree trunk 
in a jiffy, and Jimmy clambered after her. He 
wasn’t quite so used to climbing trees as we were 
and, therefore, he wasn’t nearly so quick at it, even 
though he was a boy. 

Breaking up what was left of the cookies, I scat¬ 
tered the crumbs on the floor of the Peter Pan House 
for the birds. I saw that Patty and Jimmy were 
hurrying off without me, so I put the lemonade 
pitcher and glasses in the basket, along with the 
cooky plate and the pens and ink and paper, and 
lowered them to the ground. 

“Wait for me,” I cried, climbing down and gath¬ 
ering up the things in the basket. 

Patty and Jimmy stopped and when I caught up 
with them, I panted, “It’s no fair—leaving me to 
tidy up and then not waiting.” 

Patty put her arm around me. “Slowpoke!” she 
teased. “Detectives don’t have time to wait.” 

In the kitchen Patty and Jimmy stopped long 
enough to get a drink. But they didn’t waste any 


100 


The Little Old Horsehair Trunk 


101 


time about it, because I went on ahead and paused 
at the foot of the broad stairway in the hall. Here 
was my chance to get it back on them. 

“The last one upstairs,” I called, “is a perfectly 
dumb detective.” 

I ran up the steps after that, and I could hear 
Patty and Jimmy panting and giggling as they came 
after me. I reached the top first, with my cousin 
just behind. But about two-thirds of the way up, 
Jimmy stumbled and that made him the last of all. 

But he was awfully good-natured about it. “Call 
me a dumb detective if you want to,” he said. “You’ll 
change your tune after you see what I’ve found in 
the mystery room.” 

We had to go through Mrs. Fisher’s room, of 
course, in order to get to it. The minute we opened 
the door, Jimmy said, “Aw, shucks! Now you girls 
never will get down to business.” 

He was just about right, too, for the first thing 
we saw was Jean, sitting up in her crib, laughing 
and holding out her arms to us. 

My cousin knelt down on one side of her, and I 
knelt down on the other side. “Now, patty-cake for 
us, Jean,” I begged. “You should just see her do if, 



102 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


Jimmy. I taught her last night while you were out 
in the greenhouse with your Uncle John.” 

“Aw, you girls make me tired,” he grumbled. 

“Why, Jimmy Fisher!” said Patty indignantly. 
“Don’t you love your baby sister?” 

“Sure!” he answered, and then he began to try 
to act important. “But detectives can’t stop to play 
with babies, fallen they’re on the scent of an impor¬ 
tant mystery like this.” 

“I guess he’s right!” Patty sighed, and after both 
of us had given Jean another hug, we followed him 
into the mystery room. 

We found his mother in there, putting the room 
in order. The old horsehair sofa that Jimmy had 
been sleeping on may have been valuable as a piece 
of antique furniture, but as a bed it certainly wasn’t 
very comfortable. We had insisted that he move 
into a larger and nicer room, and early that morn¬ 
ing he had taken all his personal things out—the 
few that he had. 

“Now, what are you youngsters so excited 
about?” The housekeeper smiled at us, as she fin¬ 
ished dusting the old chest in the corner. 

“We’re detectives,” Patty announced gravely, as 
she sank down beside me on the sofa. “Spaulding, 



The Little Old Horsehair Trunk 


103 


Morrison and Fisher, Incorporated! Doesn’t that 
sound scrumptious?” 

Mrs. Fisher didn’t laugh, as lots of older folks 
would have. That was another one of the things 
about her that made us love her—she always treated 
us as though we were grown-up. 

“May I ask,” she said, “what you are trying to 
detect?” I thought I saw a tiny twinkle in her eye. 
But I wasn’t sure, for the next instant she was look¬ 
ing very serious again. 

“Just at present,” I answered, “we are searching 
for Great-grandmother Belden’s jewels, which dis¬ 
appeared more than sixty years ago.” 

“That’s quite a big order, isn’t it, for your first 
job?” 

“It’s not exactly our first job,” Patty told her. 
“Patsy and I discovered this room, you know. But, 
of course, that was before we took Jimmy into the 
firm.” 

All this time, Jimmy had been searching through 
the drawers of the old chest. “Mom,” he asked, “do 
you know what became of my flash light? I left it 
in here.” 

“Oh, is that what you’re looking for?” his mother 



104 


The Treasure 0 / Bdden Place 


said. “Your Uncle John borrowed it last night.” 

Jimmy was out of the door almost before she had 
finished her sentence, and the housekeeper went back 
to her own room to finish her darning. She said she 
thought that we two girls should have the knees 
of our stockings reinforced with leather. But she 
laughed when she said it; so we knew that she wasn’t 
really cross about it, even though we did cause her 
lots of extra darning. I suppose it is pretty terrible 
the way Patty and I always burst out our knees. 
It’s really too bad that we can’t wear socks any 
more. 

Jimmy was gone for several minutes, so we leaned 
back against the old horsehair sofa and looked about 
us. What we had named the mystery room was a 
very ordinary looking place after all. It was just 
like any other room, except that the sloping walls 
on two sides made it unusually cozy. If the ceiling 
had just tried a little harder, Patty said, it might 
have succeeded in touching the floor. As it was, 
the straight-up-and-down parts of the walls, which 
were made of paneled wood instead of plaster, 
weren’t more than three or four feet high. The 
wood was worm-eaten now, with knotholes in sev¬ 
eral places, and the slanting ceilings had a number 



The Little Old Horsehair Trunk 


105 


of big stains where the rain must have seeped 
through. 

Just then Jimmy came back with the flash light, 
but he didn’t say a word to us. He simply walked 
over to the west side of the room and began to run 
his hand over the wooden wall in a queer sort of way. 
We asked him several times what he was trying to 
do; but it wasn’t any use, because he didn’t even 
seem to hear us. After a while, though, he began to 
seem worried. 

“I can’t find it any place,” he muttered. 

“Find what?” I asked. 

“I guess you’re not the only person to discover a 
secret spring.” 

“Oh, did you find one, too?” cried Patty. “What 
did it open, Jimmy?” 

“You’ll know in plenty of time,” he answered 
stubbornly. 

“Do you mean to say,” I asked him, pretending 
to be shocked, “that you really found a secret spring 
and that you’ve forgotten where it is? You’re some 
detective, Jimmy.” 

He blushed, and I saw that he was taking my 
teasing pretty much to heart. So T was quick to 
add, “Let us help you hunt.” 



106 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


“No, I found it once, and I guess I can do it 
again.” 

“Oh, I know what it is,” said Patty. “One of the 
panels in that wood isn’t a panel at all but a little 
door instead.” 

“You’re right there,” Jimmy admitted. “But 
what good does it do us if we can’t get into it? I 
just happened to press a little place in the wall and 
the door opened.” 

“What kind of a place?” I asked. “What did it 
look like?” 

“It didn’t look like anything special. It was just 
a little spot that pushed in when you touched it, and 
then one of those little panels swung open like a 
door.” 

After that he was willing to have us hunt, too. 
Every panel looked just alike, and we stopped teas¬ 
ing Jimmy, because we saw that he really couldn’t 
be blamed for forgetting where the secret spring 
was hidden. He still refused to tell us what it was 
he had discovered, and it seemed as though we sim¬ 
ply couldn’t stand it if we had to wait much longer 
to find out. 

And then—just as we were almost ready to give 
up—Jimmy found it again. He just happened to 



The Little Old Horsehair Trunk 


107 


press the right spot down near the floor and the 
little door creaked open. 

He looked up at us triumphantly, pulled out his 
flash light and crawled into the dark hole that 
opened up before us. We peeped inside, ducking so 
as not to knock our heads against the ceiling, and 
could just barely make out the outline of his form 
back in a dim corner, right underneath the eaves. 
The little place we looked into was barely more 
than five feet wide but seemed to be as long as the 
room itself. Perhaps it was just another safeguard 
that Great-grandfather Belden had provided for the 
runaway slaves, in case the mystery room had been 
discovered. Nobody could have stayed in there very 
long at a time, though, because of the way the roof 
slanted down to meet the floor. 

Jimmy was tugging at some dark object and push¬ 
ing it toward the door. Patty slipped a moist hand 
into mine, and I could hear her, breathing hard, 
right there beside me. Somehow, we just knew that 
Jimmy had discovered something awfully impor¬ 
tant. 

“Give me a hand, can’t you?” he called, and we 
reached inside and helped him pull the dark object 
out into the light. For an instant, we couldn’t tell 



108 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


what it was, it was so covered with dust and cob¬ 
webs. Then I found a dust cloth and wiped it off 
and there it was—a little, old-fashioned horsehair- 
covered trunk, studded with brass tacks. And on 
top, more tacks forming the letters, was the one 
word—Patricia. 

Jimmy reappeared, all covered with cobwebs, too, 
and with a funny smudge on his left cheek. 

“That’s it,” he said, his eyes shining. 

“You’ve found them, Jimmy,” I cried. “You’ve 
found the jewels.” And I began tugging at the lid. 

But, try as I would, the lid refused to yield. The 
trunk was locked. 








CHAPTER XI 

THE OLD DIARY 


H/E WERE so excited by this time that we hard¬ 
ly knew what we were doing. 

“The lost jewels!” I repeated in a voice I just 
couldn’t keep from shaking. 

“She didn’t own a whole trunk full of jewelry, 
did she?” Jimmy asked, his eyes almost popping out 
of his head. 

“Course not. I mean that the jewels must be 
inside.” 

“Why didn’t you tell us about this before?” Patty 
demanded, coming over and helping me tug at the 
lid. 


“I didn’t think it was any of my business, that’s 
why,” he answered. “I discovered that secret spring 
and the door sorta by accident the first day I was 
here, and I crawled inside and found the trunk. I 
didn’t try to open it because I didn’t want to go 
snooping around in other folks’ things. Besides, I 
didn’t know that there were any missing jewels till 
this morning.” 

“Just think,” I wailed, “we have the lost treasure 
right here and can’t get into it.” 


109 


110 


The Treamre of Bdden Place 


It was Patty who proved herself the resourceful 
one, as usual. “That lock doesn’t look very strong 
to me. Jimmy, run downstairs and ask your uncle 
for his crowbar.” 

I sat down on the trunk, with very much the 
feeling of a night watchman of a bank or a jewelry 
store. Common sense should have told me that the 
jewels were just as safe now as they had been all 
these years, hidden in that secret cubby-hole off 
the mystery room. But when I thought of the neck¬ 
laces, rings, bracelets, and things that Great-grand¬ 
mother must have lost, I couldn’t keep from feeling 
that they might be a little more secure if I were 
sitting on the trunk. 

When Jimmy came back with the crowbar, we 
opened the lock without a bit of trouble, and threw 
back the lid of the worn little old horsehair trunk. 
And Patty and I forgot all about the jewels in our 
joy over what we found there. 

“Oh, here’s Great-grandmother’s wedding gown,” 
I cried, holding up the yellowed satin dress, with its 
full skirt and bertha of wide lace, and running my 
fingers over its smooth folds. “I know, because this 
is the dress she wore in the little daguerreotype pic¬ 
ture Mother has of her.” 



The Old Diary 


111 


“And just to think, it once was white,” said my 
cousin softly, the very way one talks when one’s in 
church. 

But Jimmy was feeling in quite a different hu¬ 
mor, and suddenly he began to giggle. He rolled up 
into a little ball, he laughed so hard. He held up 
a queer contraption made of steel wire and woven 
cotton casing and broad strips of tape and crinoline. 

“Why, you’ve found some hoops,” I said and gig¬ 
gled, too, for they really did look funny. “Gracious, 
I’m glad we don’t have to wear things like that. 
There wouldn’t be much use in having Peter Pan 
House if we did.” 

We found other clothes in that old horsehair trunk 
—lace-trimmed petticoats, a lace scarf, a cashmere 
shawl, and dainty slippers with pretty rosette bows. 
There was a velvet wrap, too, trimmed with lace. 
Afterwards, we learned that that particular kind 
of coat was called a mantilla and it was Maltese lace 
we had admired so much. 

Best of all was the darling little bonnet of white 
velvet, lace frills, and white ribbon strings that tied 
beneath the chin. But though it was very cunning 
to look at, when Patty and I tried it on in front of 
Jimmy’s mirror, we decided we really preferred the 



112 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


hats our mothers wore. As for Jimmy, he laughed 
so hard when he saw us, that his mother came and 
stood in the doorway a minute to see what it was all 
about. 

Then in the very bottom of the trunk, we found 
a little sandalwood box, delicately carved. The jewels 
at last! But when I opened it, there was no glitter¬ 
ing array of gems and precious stones. There was 
only a worn, faded-looking, little satin-covered book. 
Jimmy’s face fell, and I began flipping the closely- 
written pages to try to hide my disappointment. 

But Patty! Why, Patty Morrison had begun to 
dance a regular Indian war dance in the middle of 
the floor, and to whoop like half a dozen Indians 
all at once. “Patsy Spaulding, you little stupid!” 
she cried. “Don’t you know what we’ve found? 
Patsy-of-the-long-face, Patsy-of-the-long-fac.e!” she 
began to tease as she twirled around again and 
again. 

“Does she often act like this?” Jimmy asked. 

He was so serious about it that I wanted to laugh. 
But I was so provoked with my cousin that I 
wouldn’t. 

“Not often,” I answered. “But she went to danc- 




Patty and I forgot all about the jewels in our joy 

over ivhat we found. 



























































































































The Old Diary 


113 


ing school last winter and perhaps she’s trying to 
show us a new step.” 

Patty flung herself down beside me on the sofa, 
exhausted; rested her head on my shoulder and 
stared ahead of her, as though lost in thought. I 
knew this trick of hers, and decided I would act in¬ 
different, too. But I couldn’t do it—my curiosity 
got the best of me. 

“For goodness sake, Patty Morrison, don’t you 
dare keep me waiting another minute,” I said. 

She looked at me lazily, through half-closed lids. 
“I must say,” she answered after a while, “you’re 
not up on the family history.” 

After this Patty dropped her languid, grand-lady 
sort of air and explained. It seemed that Great¬ 
grandmother Belden had been an unusual woman in 
many ways—unusual and very interesting. She had 
known and admired Harriet Beecher Stowe and, 
like her famous friend, had used her pen to do what 
she could to bring an end to slavery. She didn’t 
write long books, as Mrs. Stowe did, but articles for 
the magazines, using not her own name but that of 
a man, so few people outside her own family had 
known anything about it. 

Of course, I knew most of this, but I didn’t know 



114 


The Treamre of Bdden Place 


that Great-grandmother had kept a diary during 
Civil War days. Aunt May had often heard Grand¬ 
father Belden say what a shame it was that it had 
been lost. His mother had had so many thrilling 
experiences helping the runaway slaves escape to 
Canada and had been so plucky about it, that her 
journal was just like a regular story book. But 
something or other had happened to the diary— 
whether it had been destroyed or lost, no one had 
ever known. 

And now—and now we held that very diary in 
our hands. No wonder Patty was thrilled! 

As I took the worn little book from the old sandal¬ 
wood box, we discovered beneath it several packets 
of letters, yellowed with age now, and tied up into 
neat little packets with narrow blue ribbon. And 
there, too, we found the miniature. 

“It’s Great-grandmother Patricia,” my cousin 
said softly. “It’s like the daguerreotype—but love¬ 
lier.” 

“You’re just like her, Patty,” I said, looking at 
the beautiful young face of the miniature. Great¬ 
grandmother’s red-gold hair was parted in the mid¬ 
dle, brought back over her ears, coiled loosely at 
the back and allowed to hang in very short, thick 



The Old Diary 


115 


curls. Around her throat there was a string of 
pearls. She was wearing a simple, dark dress and 
a white lace fichu fastened by a brooch—a large 
topaz, surrounded by small diamonds. Of course, 
we didn’t know until we read the diary just what 
the stones were called; we only knew the brooch 
was very beautiful. 

Great-grandmother was smiling, and in each 
cheek there was just the suggestion of a dimple. 
Her dark eyes were like Patty’s, too. 

“You look something like her yourself,” my 
cousin answered loyally. 

I shook my dark, bobbed head. I knew I didn’t. 

When we looked over the letters, we found that 
one was a note from Abraham Lincoln, written dur¬ 
ing his first campaign for President and thanking 
Great-grandmother for her hospitality when he had 
visited and spoken in Fayetteville. There was 
another note from George Harrington Randolph 
who had once been governor of our state, but we 
didn’t take time to read it then. Most of the other 
letters had been written by Great-grandfather, and 
they were love letters. So we put them back into 
the box and closed the lid. 

But it was different with the diary. “Mother 



116 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


said that Grandfather Belden made quite a search 
for it, because he wanted to have it published. Great¬ 
grandmother hadn’t made it the personal thing that 
some folks make their diaries, and he knew she 
wouldn’t have minded. So it’s perfectly all right 
for us to read it,” Patty finished. “I’m sure of 
that.” 

Fascinating reading that diary made, too! It 
was small wonder that people had called our Great¬ 
grandmother Patricia a remarkable woman. 

There were accounts of gay balls and gay riding 
parties. It gave us quite a thrill to learn that it 
had been a big treat in the days before the Civil 
War to take basket dinners across to the Kentucky 
side, just as it is a treat for our Jolly Half Dozen 
Club to do it today. But instead of crossing in a 
gasoline launch or skiff, we found that the young 
folks of the sixties simply rode their horses down 
to the water’s edge and were ferried across, just as 
automobiles are ferried across now. 

When Mrs. Fisher came to call us to lunch, we 
looked up with a start. It was hard to realize we 
had been reading from ten o’clock till twelve. 

“Goodness, they had good times in those days,” I 
said, “even if they didn’t have radios and things.” 



The Old Diary 


117 


“They worked hard, too,” Patty added. “Why, 
Great-grandmother spoke of weaving and spinning, 
just as we would talk of darning a stocking. The 
only difference,” she went on, dimpling mischie¬ 
vously, “when she said she was going to do a thing, 
she went ahead and did it. But when we say we’re 
going to darn our stockings, we forget and Mrs. 
Fisher does it for us.” 

“Never mind, Mrs. Fisher,” I said gaily, smiling 
up at her. “We’ll wash the lunch dishes to-day and 
every day. We aren’t named Patricia for nothing.” 

We didn’t waste much time doing the dishes that 
day—we were too anxious to get back to the diary 
upstairs. All three of us turned in and helped— 
I washed, Jimmy dried them and Patty put them 
away, since she knew where they belonged better 
than we did. Mrs. Fisher was at her darning again 
when we passed through her room on our way to 
the mystery room, but she waved us aside when we 
offered to help her. 

“Go back to your detective work,” she said. 
“Jean’s asleep and I’ve nothing else to do.” 

“Just think,” said Patty, as she settled herself 
at one end of the old sofa and we drew our chairs 
up close. “I bet that Great-grandmother sat on this 



118 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


very sofa and wrote in this old diary just lots of 
times.’' 

Although the upholstering had been mended many 
times, it was very ragged now, and I poked my fin¬ 
gers in and pulled out some of the funny, crinkly 
hair that it was stuffed with. 

“And here we’re sitting on the same sofa and 
reading the same diary!” I said. 

Patty began to pore over the diary, and after a 
few minutes she looked up, her eyes shining. “Oh,” 
she cried breathlessly, “it’s just wonderful—all 
about the Civil War and the Underground Railroad. 
Great-grandmother tells about one family—Jake, an 
old colored man and, Mandy, his wife and their little 
grandchild. They crossed the Ohio, just as Eliza 
did in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She doesn’t say anything 
about ice, but it was awfully cold anyway. They 
made for this house first, just as all the runaway 
slaves did, because they knew they would be safe 
here.” 

Patty was so excited and talked so fast that we 
could hardly understand a word she said. She made 
room for us on the sofa, one on either side of her, 
and peering over her shoulder, we began reading for 
ourselves. Two slave-catchers were hot on the trail 



The Old Diary 


119 


of the negroes, and Great-grandmother had been in 
doubt as to what she should do, as Great-grandfather 
was away from home. But the terror in the black 
eyes of the runaways had won her sympathy; and 
when the sheriff, in behalf of the slave-catchers, 
pounded on the front door and demanded entrance, 
she hid the man and his wife and their grandchild 
in the secret room. Admitting the sheriff, she told 
him as calmly as she could to go ahead and search 
the house. He had been unable, of course, to find any 
trace of Jake and his family, and when night came 
the slaves made their way northward, under Great¬ 
grandmother’s guidance, to the next station in the 
Underground Railroad. 

“When poor old Jake left he was so grateful the 
tears ran down his cheeks,” the diary said. “And 
we were so touched by his gratitude that we could 
hardly keep the tears back either. ‘I’s gwine to pay 
you back som’ day, Missus Belden,’ he insisted. ‘I’s 
gwine to com’ back som’ day.’ ” 

“Poor old man!” I said. “I wonder if he ever did 
come back.” 

The phone rang and when Patsy returned from 
answering it, she seemed worried. “It was Mrs. 
Meredith,” she explained. “She’s getting the 



120 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


Women’s Club Benefit program ready for the 
printer, and she wants to know the name of my 
reading before evening.” 

“I wouldn’t learn anything new,” I told her for 
the twentieth time. 

“But there’s nothing I already know that will do,” 
she answered. “There’s to be a big crowd there and 
the tickets are expensive and I want to do my best 
and give something that they’ll like. Oh, dear, I 
wish Mother were here to help me.” 

I had always admired Patty for being so con¬ 
scientious, but now I was provoked because she 
really did know a dozen lovely poems and I didn’t 
see why she was making such a fuss. I didn’t say 
anything else, though, because every time I told her 
this, she insisted that she must give something dra¬ 
matic. She sat there, staring into space, her hands 
clasped tightly in her lap. For the moment, the 
little satin-covered book and the mystery were for¬ 
gotten. Then suddenly she looked up at us, her 
brown eyes shining. 

“Oh,” she cried, “oh!” and began twirling me 
around the room till I was breathless. “Oh,” she 
said again, “I’ve got the most fascinating idea.” 



CHAPTER XII 

PATTY’S FASCINATING IDEA 

H/ HENEVER Patty said she had a fascinating 
idea, I knew she meant it. I also knew how 
she liked to tease and keep a person in suspense, so 
I answered very calmly, “Oh, you have?” 

Jimmy seemed surprised that I wasn’t more inter¬ 
ested, and he was the one who said, “Tell us, quick!” 

“Well,” Patty answered, drawing out her words, 
“I think it would be nice for Patsy to write a play.” 

“A play?” I asked. “What about?” 

“About what we’ve just been reading in the diary 
—about Jake and Mandy and how Great-grand¬ 
mother helped them to escape. The three of us could 
give it instead of my reading at the Club Benefit 
next Thursday.” 

“Oh, Patty, you do have the most scrumptious 
ideas, even if you are a tease,” I cried, squeezing her 
hard. “I’d love to do it, if you think I could write 
something good enough.” 

“Sure, you can! I thought I’d like to play the 
part of Great-grandmother—unless you—” She 
hesitated. 

“Of course,” I said. “You look like her and I 


121 


122 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


don’t. Besides that would be the main part, and 
you’re the only one who could do it well enough.” 

“Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?” 

“You know I wouldn’t. I’d rather play Mandy 
anyway. I’ve always wanted a chance to black my 
face.” 

“Where do I come in?” asked Jimmy. 

“Why, you’ll be Jake, the runaway slave,” I said. 

When we started to think about it, we realized 
that there were many things to be considered besides 
just writing the play. That was a big enough job, 
and I would have to finish it within the next two 
days so that we could commence rehearsing. I was 
all shaky at the thought, but there never was any¬ 
thing I wanted to do so much. Why, the thought of 
writing a play that would be given before all those 
people thrilled me so I could hardly wait to begin. 

Patty insisted that Jean play the part of Jake’s 
child, but Jimmy and I considered that a great joke. 
The idea of trying to make that little golden-haired, 
blue-eyed mite look like a colored baby! It couldn’t 
be done—that’s all, even if we blacked her face, and 
we knew Mrs. Fisher never would consent to that. 
It was just as well anyway that we use a big doll 
for the part, because Jean might be a little hard to 



Patty's Fascinating Idea 


123 


manage. If she tried to run off the stage or cried 
or anything like that, we might even forget our 
lines. If I wrapped my doll up in a blanket and held 
it close to me, the audience would never know the 
difference anyway. 

We remembered, too, that we would need someone 
to take the part of the sheriff; and for a few minutes 
it seemed that we would have to give up having the 
play at all. 

“Let’s go down and talk it over with Mrs. Mere¬ 
dith,” Patty suggested. “Perhaps she can tell us 
what to do.” 

“We should ask her about it anyway,” I said, “be¬ 
cause she may not like the idea at all. If she doesn’t, 
there’s no sense in going ahead and making a lot of 
plans.” 

I slipped the miniature into my pocket and my 
cousin took the diary. Before we started we two 
girls went to our room, and I parted Patty’s hair in 
the middle, drew back her curls and held them in 
place with a barrette at the nape of her neck. If she 
had looked like Great-grandmother Belden before, 
she looked ever so much more like her now, and I 
wanted Mrs. Meredith to see the resemblance for 
herself. 



124 


The Treamre of Belden Place 


We insisted that Jimmy go along, and when we 
got there we found Mrs. Meredith reading on the 
big screened front porch. She looked surprised when 
we introduced our new friend; Aunt May had told 
her about Mrs. Fisher but hadn’t mentioned any 
children. Patty and I looked at each other—per¬ 
haps she wouldn’t understand if she knew we had 
found Jean and Jimmy hidden in a secret room. We 
didn’t know what to say; but just then Peg came out 
pushing the tea wagon and we didn’t have to say 
anything at all. 

“Don’t you think I’m a nice girl?” she asked sau¬ 
cily, wheeling the tea cart into a position before her 
mother’s chair. “I saw you coming and you looked 
so hot that I went out to the kitchen and made this 
lemonade straight off.” 

“Then I’m going to look hot every time I come 
here.” I took the tall, cool glass Mrs. Meredith 
poured for me. 

“How different you look to-day, Patty,” said Peg 
abruptly. 

“That’s because she has her hair parted in the 
middle,” I answered for my cousin. I took out the 
miniature and passed it around. “Don’t you think 
Patty looks like Great-grandmother Belden?” 



Patty's Fascinating Idea 


125 


“There certainly is a strong resemblance,” said 
Mrs. Meredith, looking at the lovely miniature and 
then at my cousin. 

Peg eyed us keenly. “What are you girls up to, 
anyway? You seem thrilled to pieces about some¬ 
thing.” 

We were, of course, and so was she, when she 
heard our plans. Her mother listened eagerly while 
Patty read aloud from the diary the passages about 
old Jake and Mandy, and she agreed with us that the 
incident furnished excellent material for a play. She 
thought that it would be of particular interest to 
Fayetteville people, because Great-grandmother had 
been so well known there, but— 

“Oh, Mother,” said Peg, “I don’t see why there 
has to be any ‘but’.” 

“It’s just this, dear,” said Mrs. Meredith, “we 
only have until next Thursday, and I’m afraid we 
couldn’t get it ready in time. I have so much else 
to attend to.” 

“The play will be very short,” I told her, “and 
we can begin practicing day after to-morrow.” 

“It’s not that, Patsy. I can spare the time for 
several rehearsals and I can help you with the writ- 



126 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


ing part of it. It’s the costumes and the scenery 
that make me hesitate.” 

“Mom would make the costumes,” said Jimmy, 
“and Uncle John would attend to the scenery. I 
just know he would.” 

Mrs. Meredith consented then, on the condition 
that my play would turn out to be as good as she 
thought it was going to be. Peggy and Patty 
shouted, “Goody!” and Jimmy grabbed his cap and 
threw it up into the air and caught it—not one of 
them had an idea what a big if that was. It was 
simply up to me to write a play that was good 
enough—that was all there was to it. 

I was beginning to learn that it’s no cinch to be 
a playwright. There are so many things to con¬ 
sider—the cast, for instance. We would need four 
characters besides the baby, and there were only 
three of us to take the parts. Patty suggested that 
Jimmy could be both the old colored man and the 
sheriff, since they wouldn’t be on the stage at the 
same time. Mrs. Meredith shook her head—it would 
be impossible to change costumes quickly enough— 
and besides Jimmy didn’t like the notion. Then 
Peg, who is a tom-boy anyway, suggested that she 
dress up as a sheriff. 



Patty's Fascinating Idea 


127 


“I’ll talk way down in my boots like this,” she 
said, making her voice sound like a bass drum, “and 
if I’m dressed up as a man, no one will know the 
difference.” 

We all laughed at that, and her mother said, “No, 
darling, I think we’ll have to ask your brother, Tom, 
to take the part.” 

“Oh, do you think he would?” I asked. 

Tom was Peg’s big fourteen-year-old brother and 
usually he wouldn’t pay much attention to us 
younger children. I knew he would make a wonder¬ 
ful sheriff with that deep, gruff voice of his. Once 
in a while, he would talk way up high, too; but his 
mother said that was because his voice, which was 
changing, hadn’t changed quite all the way. It al¬ 
ways embarrassed Tom just dreadfully when this 
happened; but it didn’t happen very much any more 
and every day his voice seemed to be getting gruffer. 
I never would have had the courage to ask him to 
be in a play with three ten-year-old children—a 
play which 1 had written at that. But wasn’t I 
tickled to hear his mother say she knew he would 
be glad to do it! 

“Well, if Tom’s going to be in it, I am, too,” said 
Peg decidedly. 



128 


The Treamre of Bdden Place 


“There isn’t another part for a girl, dear,” Mrs. 
Meredith reminded her. 

“Can’t you squeeze me in some place, Patsy?” Peg 
insisted. “I think you might.” 

At first I didn’t see how I could manage it, and 
1 was awfully embarrassed because I liked Peg and, 
besides, her mother was being so nice to us. Then 
Patty suggested that we let her be old Martha, 
Great-grandmother’s trusted housekeeper, who was 
more of a friend than a servant. After thinking it 
over, I realized that this would make it much simpler 
for me in getting the play started. I had intended 
to have Great-grandmother come out on the stage 
alone and talk out loud to herself in order to let the 
audience know what it was all about. But Peg’s 
mother said that was a very old-fashioned way of 
doing and that it would be much better to have her 
carry on a conversation with her housekeeper in¬ 
stead. 

“What are you going to call it?” asked Peg. And 
there was something else to decide. Patty sug¬ 
gested In Search of Freedom, and I thought of The 
Escape, and we didn’t know which to choose. 

“Why not Leaves from an Old Diary?” asked Mrs. 
Meredith. “It’s a title that would interest the peo- 



Patty’s Fascinating Idea 


129 


pie of Fayetteville, and we could explain on the 
program that the playlet is founded on an incident 
in the life of your great-grandmother.” 

“Oh, we’d love that,” Patty and I cried, almost 
in one breath. 

It seemed that everybody was anxious to help us 
with that play. John went right up to the attic 
with us when we reached Belden Place and looked 
over the pieces of furniture we wanted to use. He 
could take two or three of the old horsehair chairs 
over to the community house in the wagon he used 
for delivering flowers; he could haul the marble top 
table over, too, if we wanted it, and he would see 
that everything was brought safely back again. 

Aunt May had several tan, paneled screens 
stacked up in one corner of the attic, and John set 
them up side by side to show us how much they 
could be made to look like the walls of a room. He 
even figured out a way we could have a secret door 
leading to the mystery room. Each screen rested 
on little legs about three inches high, two to each 
panel of each screen. By sawing off the legs of just 
one end panel, it could be made to swing outward on 
its hinges when the time came for Jake and Mandy 



130 


The Treamre of Bdden Place 


to hide. After the play, he could glue the legs back 
in place, and no one would know the difference. 

The housekeeper was lovely about the costumes, 
too. It would be an easy matter to fix up something 
for Jimmy and me, so we decided to attend to 
Patty’s dress first. All of Great-grandmother’s 
clothes were too big for her, when she tried them 
on; and it was Mrs. Fisher’s suggestion that she 
make a dress out of dark cambric like the one in the 
miniature and pay for it out of the housekeeping 
fund. Patty could still use the hoops and the lace 
fichu we had found in the little old horsehair trunk. 

“May I have the Peter Pan House all to myself 
to-morrow morning?” I asked that evening after I 
had gone about the library, gathering up all the pen¬ 
cils I could find. 

“Why?” said Patty in surprise. 

“I want to work out your fascinating idea with¬ 
out anyone to bother me. I promised Mrs. Mere¬ 
dith to go down to-morrow afternoon and let her see 
what I have written on the play.” 

The next morning I scribbled away, all alone in 
our little treetop house, with only the birds to watch 
me. The river shone blue beyond the orchard, and I 
thought of the time when it was a perilous stream 



Patty’s Fascinating Idea 


131 


to cross for the black folks, and when one shore 
meant slavery for them and the other freedom. 

I scribbled away, and as I wrote I forgot that I, 
too, was not living in that far-away day when Great¬ 
grandmother hid the slaves. 









CHAPTER XIII 

PATSY SPAULDING, PLAYWRIGHT 

GOOD Lawd bress you !” I mumbled to 
myself. “Ye’ll hab yer rewa’d in heab’n, 
Missus Belden. De good Lawd bress you—” 

“For goodness sake, Patsy Spaulding, give us a 
rest,” said Patty, stopping up her ears. 

“But what if I forget my lines?” I wailed, rubbing 
some more brown grease paint on the left side of 
my nose, where the white skin was beginning to 
show through in spite of the generous application 
Mrs. Fisher had given me. 

“After writing the play yourself, I shouldn’t think 
you’d forget the one line you have to say,” Patty 
answered, swishing her black cambric skirts as she 
walked over to the other mirror in the dressing room 
to fasten Great-grandmother Belden’s white lace 
fichu with my gold bar pin. “What if you had to 
remember all my part?” 

Of course, there was no answer to that, so I was 
careful to mumble under my breath as I pulled on 
the black woolly wig Mrs. Meredith had rented in 
Arlington and tied a red bandanna handkerchief 
around my head to make a turban like the ones 


132 


Patsy Spaulding, Playwright 


133 


colored people used to wear. My cousin had been 
exaggerating when she said I only had one speech 
to give—I had three. That may not have been very 
much, compared with all the lines she had learned, 
but I couldn’t help feeling a little nervous, now that 
we were in the dressing room getting ready and the 
actual performance was less than a half hour away. 
I knew those three speeches of mine backward, but 
still there was the chance that I might forget. If 
I did, with all those people looking on, I was sure I 
would simply die of shame. Jimmy had told me he 
felt the same way; but there was more excuse for 
him, because he had a bigger part. 

Peg, wearing a long gray cambric dress and a 
white cap and apron, opened the door. She laughed 
when she saw me. 

“By jiggers,” she said, “I bet you look more like 
Mandy than she did herself.” 

I pulled an old brown shawl closer over my ragged 
dress, and looked in the mirror. A little ragged 
colored woman looked back at me, and drew her 
shawl closer, too. I picked up my big doll wrapped 
in a blanket and hugged it to me, and she hugged her 
grand-baby. It bothered me to see her looking so 
frightened. Then I realized that it didn’t matter— 



134 


The Treasv/re of Bdden Place 


Mandy was supposed to be scared of the sheriff any¬ 
way. 

“This grease paint makes my face tickle, but I’m 
glad I look all right.” I glanced at my cousin, sitting 
up very straight in a stiff chair. She couldn’t sit 
any other way with those hoops she was wearing. 
“Wouldn’t it be nice to look all right and beautiful 
at the same time, as Patty does?” 

“I bet you feel more comfortable than I do,” 
Patty answered, squirming as I am sure Great¬ 
grandmother Belden never squirmed. “Goodness, 
I’m glad hoops went out of style.” 

Patty was lovely in the dark dress and white lace 
fichu; and when Peg’s mother came in and coiled 
her auburn hair in a loose, low knot, allowing the 
ends to hang in short, thick curls on her white neck, 
she looked exactly like the Great-grandmother Bel¬ 
den we had seen in the miniature. 

“Oh, Patty,” I said, “I wish Aunt May and Mother 
could see you now!” 

An Arlington violinist was finishing a solo be¬ 
fore the curtain, and the next number would be ours. 
We tiptoed out for a last look at the stage, to see 
that everything was ready. It was surprising how 
much like a real room it looked with only those 



Patsy Spaulding, Playwright 


135 


screens for a background. We had found a bound 
volume of Godey's Lady's Book —that’s a magazine 
people used to read—in the attic, and torn some of 
the old-fashioned prints out of it and hung them 
on the screens, just as though they were walls; and 
Patty had brought out a sampler Great-grandmother 
had worked when she was a little girl. This we 
hung in the center, in the most prominent place of 
all. The horsehair chairs and the marble top table 
were the only furniture, but you can’t imagine how 
cozy and homelike it all was. 

The boys followed us out onto the stage, behind 
the drawn curtains. Tom was very fierce and busi¬ 
ness-like in the chaps and broad-brimmed hat of a 
sheriff of the fifties, and Jimmy was looking very 
scared as old black Jake. Tom Handed me one of 
the printed programs—the first one I had seen— 
and when I came to the part that told about us, this 
was what I read: 

LEAVES FROM AN OLD DIARY 
Founded on an actual incident in the life of 
Mrs. Patricia Belden, as related in an account 
entered in her diary, January 20, 1858. 



136 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


DRAMATIZED BY PATSY SPAULDING 
Cast 


Mrs. Belden.Patty Morrison 

Martha, her housekeeper.Peg Meredith 

Jake, a runaway slave.Jimmy Fisher 

Mandy, his wife.Patsy Spaulding 

The Sheriff.Tom Meredith 


With a little thrill I folded up that program and 
slipped it into the neck of my dress. Then I peeped 
out through the curtains at that large audience ap¬ 
plauding the violinist—the audience that was to see 
Leaves from an Old Diary. And then I knew why 
it was I had felt worried and anxious and nervous. 
It hadn’t been because I had a few lines to say and 
was afraid I would forget them. No—it was be¬ 
cause it was my play those people out in front were 
waiting to see, and I wanted them to like it. 

Martha was alone on the stage when the curtains 
parted, dusting and setting the room to rights. The 
hush in the audience gave place to a soft murmur 
of admiration when Great-grandmother Belden 
entered, looking very quaint and lovely in the vel¬ 
vet and Maltese lace mantilla and the little white 
velvet bonnet tied beneath the chin with ribbons. 








Patsy Spaulding, Playwright 


137 


There was a soft laugh when Patty untied the bon¬ 
net and handed that and her wrap to the house¬ 
keeper, but it was hushed when she began to speak. 
It wasn’t really a laugh anyway—it sounded as 
though the audience had just smiled out loud. 

“My husband has gone, Martha,” said Great¬ 
grandmother with a sigh. “I wish that I might 
have gone to Washington with him, but I am needed 
here.” 

“You are, indeed, Mrs. Belden, with some of those 
poor runaway black folks crossing the river nearly 
every week.” 

Great-grandmother wrung her hands in distress. 
(It really was wonderful the way Patty did it.) 
“Oh, I pray that none of them will come, while Mr. 
Belden is away,” she said. “My heart is sad for 
them, yet it is a grave responsibility we take, Mar¬ 
tha, when we hide them and help them to escape.” 

She took up her knitting then, and the two of 
them talked about the Fugitive Slave Law which 
provided that when runaway slaves were found, 
even in the northern states, they must be returned 
to their masters. But as a human being, Great¬ 
grandmother declared, she would always be ready 
to help another human being, if her help were 



138 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


needed. After that she began to sing in a sweet, 
clear voice, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the 
coming of the Lord,” and Martha began dusting the 
same piece of furniture for the fifth time. (We had 
tried to make Peg move about the stage a little bit 
more, when we were rehearsing, but when I peeped 
out from behind a screen, I saw that she had for¬ 
gotten all about it.) 

Suddenly, the song was interrupted by the sound 
of a loud knocking on the big front door. (Jimmy 
made it by pounding on the wall with my little toy 
iron.) Great-grandmother seemed startled and told 
Martha to find out who was there. When Peg came 
out to us, we began murmuring, loudly enough for 
the audience to hear our voices but too softly for 
anyone to know what we were saying. Martha 
rushed back onto the stage, very excited, and re¬ 
ported that two runaway slaves, with their little 
baby, sought admittance. They were shivering with 
cold and very hungry, and a slave-catcher was pur¬ 
suing them. Unless Great-grandmother took them 
in, he would find them surely and they would be 
forced to return with him. Great-grandmother 
wrung her hands again—(I just know Patty is go¬ 
ing to be a great actress when she grows up.)—and 



Patsy Spmlding, Playwright 


139 


declared that no matter what the penalty might be 
for aiding us she would not turn us from her door. 
Then very proudly she instructed Martha to bid us 
enter. (She stamped her foot when she said it, and 
it was wonderful.) 

When we followed Peg back onto the stage, I for¬ 
got everything but one fact—that I was a runaway 
slave, scared and cold and hungry and that I was 
throwing myself on the mercy of a kind and beau¬ 
tiful woman. Jimmy must have felt the same way 
about it, because when he began pleading for pro¬ 
tection, his voice shook and it wasn’t with stage 
fright either. He had never done half so well in 
rehearsals as he was doing then. 

“Massa’s sent de slave-catcher arter us,” said 
Jimmy, “an’ ef yo’ don’ help us, Missus, we’ll hab 
ter be gwine wid him dis night.” 

“Why did you run away, poor man?” asked 
Great-grandmother. 

At that I began to sob—(I may not have had 
many lines to say, but I had a hard part anyway. It 
isn’t easy to cry—that is, when you’re just making 
believe you’re doing it.)—and Jimmy explained 
that we had been sold to a new master who was un¬ 
kind to us. 



140 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


“Dey done tole us dat dis Mistah Belden is a good 
man and he’d help us git to a place whar dere be 
no slaves,” I said. 

Great-grandmother seemed greatly troubled as 
she explained that this was true. If her husband 
were only there he would have driven us that night 
to a house farther north that was also called a sta¬ 
tion in the Underground Railroad. On the follow¬ 
ing night the man who lived there would have helped 
us to escape to a third house, and in time we would 
have reached Canada where we would be free. 

But the difficulty was—Mr. Belden was away, and 
there was no man she could call upon who would be 
in sympathy with us. Just as Great-grandmother 
told us that, there was another loud knocking at the 
door. Martha hurried out and returned with the 
word that the local sheriff demanded entrance. His 
help had been sought by a slave-catcher, and Mandy 
and Jake had been traced to this house. He de¬ 
manded that Mrs. Belden give us up at once. 

Martha began to wring her hands, too, (Peg 
didn’t do it nearly so well as my cousin.) and told 
us that we must go back and be slaves again. The 
local sheriff did not believe in helping the runaway 



Patsy Spaulding, Playwright 


141 


black people and, when he found them, he always 
returned them to their owners. 

Great-grandmother drew herself up to her full 
height. “There are no slaves in my house. There 
are only my guests, who from this day on, God will¬ 
ing, shall be free. Quick, Martha! We shall hide 
them in the secret room. Then you may bid the 
sheriff enter,” she finished with a note of triumph 
in her voice. 

Martha went over to one of the screens and began 
fumbling as though searching for a hidden spring. 
Then slowly one of the panels swung inward— (Mrs. 
Meredith was standing back of it and pulling it 
open.)— and Jimmy and I disappeared inside. 

There was quite an argument between Mrs. Bel- 
den and the sheriff. He reminded her that severe 
penalties were inflicted on people who helped run¬ 
away slaves to escape and that it was his duty to 
find us. Great-grandmother replied very calmly 
that he was welcome to search the house, and he did. 
Once, when he was off the stage, hunting for us in 
another room supposedly, she came over and opened 
the secret door. 

“Keep very quiet, my good people,” she said soft¬ 
ly, “and you will be safe.” 



142 


The Treamre of Bdden Place 


The sheriff was very angry when he could not find 
us. He came back and stood right in front of the 
secret door, and the audience got awfully excited— 
as Jane and Barbara and Carolyn told us after¬ 
wards—because it seemed that any instant he might 
discover us. 

Tom had been playing his part wonderfully. His 
voice had been gruff and heavy up till then, and he 
said, “You have a place you hide them, and some 
day I’m going to find it. Take care, Mrs. Belden, 
take care!” And what do you think happened when 
he said, “Take care!” in that dramatic way? His 
voice changed. Yes, it squeaked; and of course the 
audience couldn’t keep from laughing. 

Great-grandmother let us out of the secret room 
after the sheriff had gone, and told Martha to pre¬ 
pare us a hot supper, as we were going on a journey. 
Her husband was away, and there was no man she 
could trust, but when darkness fell, she herself would 
drive us on to the next station in the Underground 
Railroad. Jake promised that he would return some 
day to repay her for her kindness—(Jimmy tried 
to make the tears run down his cheeks, but he 
couldn’t manage it.)—and I knelt and kissed the 
hem of her dress. 



Patsy Spaulding, Playwright 


143 


“De good Lawd bress you. Yo’ll hab yo’ rewa’d 
in heab’n, Missus Belden,” I said; and the curtain 
fell amidst a storm of applause, as the paper said 
next day. 

The audience clapped and clapped, and we all went 
back on the stage and bowed. Mrs. Meredith told 
Patty to go out alone and curtsy, and she insisted 
that I should, too, since I was the playwright. I 
didn’t like to in my Mandy costume, but there was 
nothing else to do, because by the time I would have 
changed my dress and taken off my make-up, the 
people might have stopped applauding. I didn’t 
really mind, though, when I went out to bow—the 
audience was so nice and clapped so loud. 

“Now, children, hurry and get dressed for the re¬ 
ception,” said Mrs. Meredith, for our playlet had 
been the last number on the program. 

The people went into the big lounge after that; 
and the members of the Jolly Half Dozen Club, who 
hadn’t been in the play, served refreshments. Jane 
stood behind the punch bowl and was so excited when 
she poured me a glass that she almost spilled it. 
“You were simply wonderful,” she said. Barbara 
and Carolyn both swooped down on us with trays of 
cookies, jabbering their congratulations and for- 



144 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


getting that there were others waiting to be served. 

Everybody was lovely to us and declared they had 
enjoyed the play. And a dear old lady came up to 
Patty and me and said, “I am Mrs. Hanna, and I 
knew your great-grandmother when I was a little 
girl.” 

I believe that thrilled us more than anything that 
had happened all evening, and the three of us slipped 
off to a quiet corner and talked. Mrs. Hanna ex¬ 
plained that she hadn’t lived in Fayetteville since 
she was a child and that she was there visiting her 
niece, Mrs. Craig, whom we both knew. 

“I certainly didn’t expect to see a play about Mrs. 
Belden, when I came to-night,” she said. “I be¬ 
lieve your great-grandmother was the kindest and 
most beautiful woman I have ever known. I used to 
worship her from afar, and one time when she was 
especially sweet to me, I walked about on air for 
days.” 

“Oh, tell us about it, please,” said Patty eagerly. 

“Well, my mother had sent me on an errand up 
to Belden Place,” said Mrs. Hanna. “Your great¬ 
grandmother was very distressed because her jewels 
had recently been stolen; but that didn’t keep her 
from inviting me in and serving me with tea quite 




“Leaves from an Old Diary”—Dramatized by 
Patsy Spaulding. 














































Pats'll Spaulding, Playwright 


145 


as though I were grown up. Of course, we just pre¬ 
tended I drank tea—it was really milk—and after¬ 
wards she took me into the garden and picked me 
a big bouquet.” 

The old lady was silent then, as though lost in her 
thoughts of the far-away tea party, when Great¬ 
grandmother had treated a little girl as though she 
were grown-up. We knew what a nice feeling that 
gives one—we always appreciate it when folks treat 
us that way. 

“I’ve been wondering,” said Mrs. Hanna, “if the 
Jake in the play was the old slave who found Mrs. 
Belden’s jewels for her.” 

Patty and I gasped. “Why, did Jake find the 
jewels?” I asked. 

“Some old colored man did, didn’t he?” she said. 
“A runaway slave your great-grandmother had once 
befriended.” 

“We never heard anything about it till this 
minute,” said Patty, “and, Mrs. Hanna, we’re hunt¬ 
ing for those jewels now.” 

“Won’t you tell us everything you know about it?” 
I asked. 

“But, my dears,” said Mrs. Hanna, evidently sur¬ 
prised by our sudden interest, “I don’t know any- 



146 


The Treamre of Bdden Place 


thing. I only remember vaguely hearing that some 
old colored man had found them.” 

Wasn’t that exasperating? Patty and Jimmy and 
I could think of nothing else on our way home—the 
playlet and the reception were very far away and 
didn’t seem to matter any more. It was plain that 
the old diary had still other secrets for us. 

“We must read it clear through,” I said, “and not 
let anything interfere again.” 

“Yes,” answered Patty, “we’re going to get back 
to work on that mystery the first thing to-morrow.” 








CHAPTER XIV 
THE MISSING PAGES 


j^T^E LOVED Mrs. Fisher—Patty and I both did 
—and it wasn’t because she didn’t make us 
mind her, either. In the end we always found our¬ 
selves doing the things she told us to, but she would 
be so nice about telling us her reasons that we never 
felt the least bit huffy. Why, we minded her as a 
matter of course, just as we would have minded our 
mothers. 

The morning after the play, I announced to Patty 
and Jimmy that I thought we should call a confer¬ 
ence. 

“Yes, we made a very en—en—enlightening dis¬ 
covery last night,” said Patty, stumbling over the 
“enlightening” a little. I don’t believe she had ever 
used the word before, although she wouldn’t have 
admitted it for anything. I rather suspect that 
Patty looks up one word in the dictionary every 
morning, for there isn’t a day passes that she 
doesn’t spring a new one on us. In fact, only about 
a half hour before I had found her in the library be¬ 
fore the dictionary stand and she had blushed like 
anything. 


147 


148 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


“Shall we meet in the mystery room or in the 
Peter Pan House?” asked Jimmy. 

I hesitated. I really thought the treetop house 
would be more fun, but it didn’t seem quite the 
proper place to discuss such important matters. “I 
think the mystery room would be more business¬ 
like,” I answered. 

We were washing and drying the breakfast dishes, 
and Mrs. Fisher was in the pantry cleaning the 
shelves. She stopped her work for a moment and 
stood in the doorway. 

“I don’t like to disappoint you,” she said, “but 
couldn’t you wait until afternoon to hold your con¬ 
ference?” She seemed to smile a little over the last 
word, but I couldn’t be sure. 

‘Why?” asked Patty. 

“You’ve been staying in the house so closely for 
the last few days, with your mystery and your re¬ 
hearsing, that I believe you’d better play outdoors 
this morning.” 

“Couldn’t we hold the conference in the Peter Pan 
House?” I asked. 

The housekeeper shook her head. “No, a good, 
brisk game of baseball would be even better. After- 



The Missing Pages 


149 


wards, if you like, you can have your lunch as a 
picnic.” 

Wasn’t that just like Mrs. Fisher? She had 
promised our mothers she would see that we had 
plenty of outdoor exercise, and she was going to 
keep her word. But whenever she told us to do a 
thing we didn’t want to do, she always had a little 
surprise tucked up her sleeve to make it pleasanter 
for us—that picnic, for instance. 

John said he thought we were awfully funny 
youngsters, not to want to play out in the orchard 
that most boys and girls would give their heads for. 
He laughed when we tried to explain that we did 
want to but that we also wanted to stay indoors and 
have a conference. There are times when I almost 
wish I were twins. Then one of me could be doing 
one thing and the other me could be doing something 
else equally interesting—all at the same time. Of 
course, that’s silly, because if I were twins, I’d only 
be one of them and the other one would be my sister. 

“You play for about two hours,” said John, “and 
then come out to the greenhouse. I might have a 
surprise for you, too.” 

“As nice a surprise as the Peter Pan House?” I 
asked. 



150 


The Treamre of Belden Place 


He grinned. “Well, that will be for you to de¬ 
cide.” 

Jimmy went after his baseball bat with the 
initials J. F. carved into the handle—the very same 
bat that had aroused our curiosity only a little over 
a week before; and he said he was going to show 
us how to play real baseball. Of course, there wasn’t 
anything very real about a game with only three 
people in it; but each of us took turns pitching, 
batting, and catching, and in that way we got the 
exercise we needed, and had lots of fun besides. 

My cousin and I wanted to make up a team among 
the girls; but we couldn’t do that very well until we 
knew a little more about the game ourselves, and I 
believe Jimmy was the best person we could have 
found to teach us. He had played on the Fifth 
Grade team of his school in Arlington, and from a 
few of the things his mother had told us, we knew 
that he had practically won several victories for his 
room. Of course, Jimmy in his own modest way 
had said, “Aw, shucks, I didn’t do anything much,” 
but the first time we saw him bat, we knew his 
mother was right. Why, he could “knock a grounder” 
any time, but he said that was because we girls were 
such easy pitchers. 



The Missing Pages 


151 


“All you need is a lot of practice,” he told us two 
hours later when we put up the ball and bat and the 
three of us went to see the surprise John had 
promised us. 

We found the gardener back of the greenhouse, 
doing nothing more romantic than digging a hole. 
When he saw us, he took a piece of white chalk from 
his pocket, marked a circle on the ground and handed 
his spade to Jimmy. 

“Suppose you do your own digging,” he said. 
“Don’t get outside the chalk lines and don’t make 
your hole more than a foot deep.” 

He beckoned to Patty and me and, completely 
mystified, we followed him. We knew from ex¬ 
perience that it wouldn’t do any good to ask what 
he was up to. The old smoke house had recently 
been torn down, since it was in no condition to be 
used and Aunt May didn’t need it anyway; and John 
led us to the pile of bricks which had not yet been 
hauled away. Gathering up a pile of them in his 
arms, he told us to take some, too, and in silence the 
three of us walked back to Jimmy. 

“Now,” said John, grinning all over with pleasure 
at the thought of the surprise he was giving us, 



152 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


“we’re going to build a furnace so you can cook your 
lunch outdoors.” 

“Whoop-ee!” Patty shouted, and “Hurrah for 
Uncle John!” yelled Jimmy. As for me, I just stood 
there without saying a word, I was so tickled. I 
was thinking, too, that I wished Daddy, instead of 
being a lawyer, made his living by running a green¬ 
house and had to hire someone to take care of it. It 
must be wonderful to have a person always thinking 
up surprises for you, but when finally I got my voice 
back and said so, Patty reminded me that all garden¬ 
ers are not like John. 

We built a little wall of bricks around the hole 
Jimmy had finished digging, laying them very care¬ 
fully. After we had broken up some kindling and 
carried several chunks from the woodpile, John built 
us a fire down in the hole and laid a grate from an 
old gas stove on top of the bricks. Then everything 
was ready for us to cook our dinner. 

John looked after the fire for us while we three 
children ran into the house to wash our hands and 
gather up supplies. Mrs. Fisher already had put 
plates and knives and forks and a skillet into a 
basket for us; and by the time Patty had taken some 
eggs and bacon and tomatoes from the refrigerator 



The Missing Pages 


153 


and I had found some cookies and rolls in the bread 
box, we had quite a load. 

“I guess we’ll just have to take turns cooking,” 
my cousin suggested when it was found that each 
one of us wanted a chance to fry some bacon and 
eggs over that clever iron grating. She tried it first, 
and while we waited, I sliced some tomatoes on each 
plate and Jimmy opened all the rolls and buttered 
them. The fire was getting hotter every minute, 
and we all burned our bacon a little and the eggs we 
fried looked awfully brown. But then nothing like 
that ever matters on a picnic anyway. 

“Gee, but I like bacon and egg sandwiches,” said 
Jimmy, between bites. 

“These tomatoes taste good, too,” said my cousin. 
“I’m glad we thought to bring them.” 

“Everything would be perfect,” I added, “if we 
only had a nice cold drink. This bacon makes me 
thirsty.” 

And as if in answer to my wish, Mrs. Fisher ap¬ 
peared around the corner of the greenhouse, carry¬ 
ing a tray of tall, cool glasses of orangeade. 

Much as we Had enjoyed if, I don’t believe we Had 
ever worked so hard for a meal before—at least, 
Patty and I hadn’t. Our work Had made us tired 



154 


The Treamre of Belden Place 


and our meal had made us feel contented, so per¬ 
haps it was no wonder that we just kept on sitting 
there after we had finished eating. 

Patty yawned. “I don’t believe I ever want to 
move again.” 

“What do you girls say to having our conference 
right here?” Jimmy suggested. “Who cares if it 
isn’t business-like?” 

“All right,” I answered, for I seemed to have 
more pep left than they did. “I’ll run upstairs and 
wash my hands and get the diary. We’ll have to 
have that, you know.” 

We believed that if there was anything to the 
story about an old slave finding the jewels that we 
would probably read something about it in the diary. 
It really seemed that Mrs. Hanna had been thinking 
about some other jewels, because the ones Great¬ 
grandmother had lost had never been recovered. 

“At least, it’s a clue worth following up,” said 
Patty. “And if there is anything to it, I have a 
hunch that Jake was the one who found them.” 

It was my turn to read, and anyway I had to, be¬ 
cause I was the only one of the three who had clean 
hands. The whole diary made fascinating reading, 
but just at that moment we were only interested in 



The Missing Pages 


155 


finding out something about the missing jewels. 
They hadn’t disappeared until after the war had 
been over a year or two, so I turned the pages hastily 
to the entries for 1867. Every page seemed to hold 
a story, but I kept right on until I came to the entry 
we were hunting. 

“They’re gone,” I read, “the topaz and diamond 
brooch my husband gave me on my wedding day, my 
cameo, my belt buckle, the string of pearls my 
mother brought from England, the amethyst ear¬ 
rings, my bracelet and my rings, even my slipper 
buckles. 

“The entire household, including the servants, 
spent Friday in Arlington attending the fair; and 
when we returned about six o’clock, we found the 
remains of a feast which some uninvited guests had 
prepared for themselves in the kitchen. There were 
no other signs that robbers had been here, and at 
first we believed that only harmless tramps had 
visited us. 

“Later, when I found my empty jewel case, we 
notified the sheriff of our loss. He has scoured the 
county for us, and the sheriffs of the adjoining coun¬ 
ties Have joined in the search. They Have met with 
no success whatever, and there seems to he nothing 



156 


The Treamre of Belden Place 


else that we can do. I am almost in despair, and 
spent the entire morning mending several foolish 
little rents in the sofa, just to get my mind on some¬ 
thing else. We have offered one hundred dollars as 
a reward for the recovery of the jewels, but I doubt 
if any good will come of it.” 

“Mr. Whitney was right!” I cried. “Just think, 
Jimmy! A one hundred dollar reward, and you 
shall have every cent of it to go to art school.” 

I still had my nose buried in the diary. “Here's 
something else,” I said, “written about a week later.” 

And once more the three of us bent our heads over 
the yellowed leaves of the old book. 

“A very strange thing happened to-day,” Great¬ 
grandmother had written, “and I believe it throws 
much light on the loss of the jewels. A little boy 
came to our door this morning, having walked all the 
way from Blufton, ten miles down the river. The 
child wasn’t very clear in his explanations, but it 
seems that a boat had been docked for a few minutes 
near his father’s farm and an old Negro named 
Jake had come on land to give him a message he 
was very anxious to have delivered to me. 

“Jake, probably the old runaway slave we be¬ 
friended several years ago, is working on an Ohio 



The Missing Pages 


157 


River boat, the name of which the boy was unable 
to remember; and when it stopped at Fayetteville, 
the old man received permission to come up and 
thank us for what we had once done for him. That 
was last Friday, the day we were in Arlington, and 
of course he found none of us at home. But he did 
find—” 

“Why, what’s the matter?” Jimmy said. “Some¬ 
thing’s gone!” 

“I—I don’t understand,” I stammered. 

But the minute I said it, I knew that I did under¬ 
stand. Several pages had been cut from the diary 
of Great-grandmother Belden, and with them was 
gone the secret of the missing jewels. 







CHAPTER XV 

A PARTY AND AN APPOINTMENT 

SIMPLY must find those missing pages,” 
I said. “Ask your Uncle John for his flash 
light, Jimmy, and we’ll go up to the mystery room 
and examine that dark little cubby-hole again.” 

When we explained to Mrs. Fisher that we were 
about to make an important discovery, she offered 
to wash our picnic dishes, and we promised to do 
the dinner dishes that night instead. It was a good 
thing we had on our old clothes, for after we had 
crawled into the cubby-hole we looked so dusty and 
cobwebby that our own mothers might have had to 
look twice before knowing who we were. After that 
we searched the room and then the attic, but try as 
we would, we could not find the missing pages to the 
diary. At last our quest brought us back to the 
mystery room and the little sandalwood box. 

“Perhaps we’ll find those pages in among these 
letters,” Patty suggested. “Let’s look anyway.” 

That was how we happened to come across Gover¬ 
nor Randolph’s letter again. Of course, he hadn’t 
been governor when he wrote it, but just a young 
man building up a law practice in Arlington. The 


158 


A Party and an Appointment 


159 


letter was dated June 5, 1880, about fifteen years 
after the disappearance of the jewels, and was writ¬ 
ten from New Orleans. 

“This proves it,” cried Patty, looking up from the 
yellowed sheets. “The jewels are in the house some 
place.” And she read the note aloud to us. 

“My dear Mrs. Belden, I am the proud bearer of 
a message to you from an old runaway slave you 
once befriended. A few days ago I was on a Mis¬ 
sissippi steamboat on my way to the gulf, when an 
old negro, Jake, by name, sought me out, having 
heard that I came from Arlington. He was too old 
and weak to be of much use on the boat any longer; 
but they kept him on for old times’ sake, I was told, 
for he had served them faithfully for sixteen years. 
Old Jake asked at once if I knew the Beldens of 
Fayetteville, and when I told him that, indeed, our 
families had been friends for many years, his black 
face lighted up with joy. 

“His request was that I thank you for your kind¬ 
ness to him and his family during the troublesome 
days of the Underground. He had once called to 
thank you, about two years after the close of the 
war, he said. His boat was docked at Fayetteville 
for less than an hour, but he had received permission 



160 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


to call at Belden Place for a few minutes. On ar¬ 
riving there, he found you away, robbers in the 
house, and the family jewels piled in a heap on Mr. 
Belden’s desk, while the thieves helped themselves to 
a feast in the kitchen. 

“There was no time to turn in an alarm; his boat 
was leaving in a few minutes; and he realized that 
he would be serving you very poorly if his presence 
were discovered there. The fact that he was able 
to hide the jewels and send you a message after¬ 
wards has given the old fellow joy and satisfaction 
ever since. He felt that, in saving them, he had 
partially repaid you.” 

Patty laid the quaint, old-fashioned letter down, 
unfinished. “Now we need those missing pages more 
than ever,” she said. 

“Let’s ask Mr. Whitney what to do,” I suggested. 

Patty and Jimmy thought this the very thing, and 
we started at once for the grocery store. 

On the front porch we met the postman who 
handed my cousin and me both a letter from our 
mothers. Out of Patty’s envelope flew a crisp new 
five dollar bill, and out of my envelope flew a five 
dollar bill just like it. We had been so interested 
in our treasure hunt that we had completely for- 



A Party and an Appointment 


161 


gotten that this was my eleventh birthday and that 
the next day would be Patty’s—and that was an al¬ 
most unheard of thing for either of us to do. 

Our letters said just about the same thing—that 
our mothers were sorry they couldn’t be with us and 
that we were to spend our five dollar bills for any¬ 
thing we pleased. Under ordinary circumstances, 
this would have been enough to send prickly thrills 
all up and down our backbones, but we were so much 
taken up with our mystery just then, that we took 
the news quite calmly. We had written our mothers 
about Leaves from an Old Diary, and they seemed 
very pleased. In fact, most of my letter was about 
that, and so was my cousin’s. 

I saw that Jimmy was watching us anxiously. 
“Do—do—your mothers say anything about—about 
Jean and me?” 

Patty looked up with a little frown. “Mine does,” 
she answered, “and I don’t understand it, either. 
She says, ‘Who is this Jimmy who is helping with 
the play?’ ” 

“Don’t you suppose she got our first letter, telling 
her all about it?” I asked. 

“It doesn’t look like it,” said Patty. “She doesn’t 



162 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


mention that letter, and I believe she thinks Jimmy 
is some boy visiting in Fayetteville.” 

“Oh, dear!” I said. “Now we’ll have to write and 
explain all over again.” 

I didn’t mean to sound impatient, but I guess I 
did, because when I looked at Jimmy, he was digging 
the toe of his shoe into the ground and looking alto¬ 
gether miserable. 

“Cheer up!” Patty told him. “I—I believe they’ll 
let you stay.” She was frying hard to keep the 
doubt out of her voice, but she didn’t succeed very 
well and Jimmy knew it. 

Of course, Mr. Whitney teased us about being de¬ 
tectives, just as we had expected that he would. But 
after a while he sobered down and said, “Well, now, 
I reckon you youngsters are on the trail of some¬ 
thing important.” 

“Of course, we are,” said Patty. “But we don’t 
know what to do next.” 

“We came to you for advice,” said Jimmy timidly. 

“Ho, ho!” Mr. Whitney laughed. “I don’t sell 
advice, young sir. I sell cheese and crackers and—” 

“Then you can give us the advice,” Patty cut in 
quickly. 

Mr. Whitney laughed again. “If I were doing 



A Party and <m Appointment 


163 


it,” he said, “I’d go over to Arlington and see Charles 
B. Randolph, the attorney. Your mothers know him, 
and so does Patsy’s father.” 

“Oh, was he any kin to the governor?” Jimmy 
asked. 

“His son and about the only person living that I 
know of who can give you any help.” 

That was how it happened that we decided to 
spend our five dollar bills on a trip to Arlington. 
We were surprised to learn that, though Jimmy had 
lived in the city all his life, he had never been to 
Humboldt Amusement Park — why, he had never 
been on a merry-go-round even, or on a ferris wheel 
or in the House of Mirrors. 

“That shall be our birthday party,” I said. “If 
your mother will take us over to Arlington tomor¬ 
row, we can see Mr. Randolph in the morning, have 
lunch at the hotel Mother always goes to, and spend 
all afternoon at Humboldt Park.” 

When I saw how Jimmy’s face lighted up with 
pleasure, I was glad I had made the suggestion, if 
for no other reason than that. “Gee!” he said. 
“Gee!” 

Mrs. Fisher consented to our plans, and John said 
that he could manage with Jean for the day. So at 



164 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


eight o’clock the next morning, the four of us were 
down at the interurban station, ready for the hour’s 
ride into the city. We called at Mr. Randolph’s 
office the first thing, but here we had a disappoint¬ 
ment. 

“Mr. Randolph is leaving town this evening and 
will not be in his office at all to-day,” the pretty sec¬ 
retary told us. “Mr. Thorndyke, his partner, will 
be glad to see you.” 

“No,” Patty told her, “it isn’t business exactly 
we want to see him about.” 

“How long will he be gone?” I asked. 

“Six weeks.” 

I must have looked very distressed about it, for 
she said, “Are you friends of his?” 

“Our mothers are,” Patty answered. And she 
smiled at the secretary, as only Patty can smile, and 
gave her our names. 

The pretty young lady smiled back, took the tele¬ 
phone receiver off the hook and called a number. 
Presently we heard her talking to Mr. Randolph’s 
residence. 

“He is out now,” she informed us, turning from 
the phone, “but is expected back in about an hour. 
If you care to stop in again, perhaps I can arrange 



A Party and cm Appointmen t 


165 


an appointment for you at his home this afternoon.” 

That was the reason we had our birthday party 
at Humboldt Park in the morning instead of after 
lunch. Never before had we found the ferris wheel 
and the merry-go-round so much fun as we did that 
day, and that was because we enjoyed watching 
Jimmy enjoy them. A new feature had been added 
to the park since Patty and I had visited it nearly 
a year before—a roller coaster—and when we begged 
to go on it, Mrs. Fisher hesitated. 

“I know it’s perfectly safe,” she said, her eyes fol¬ 
lowing one of the little cars that was shooting up 
and then down and then up again at such an amaz¬ 
ing rate of speed. “But it certainly doesn’t look 
like a fit place for three ten-year-olds to be alone.” 

“You forget,” said Patty, dimpling mischievously, 
“that two of us are eleven years old now.” 

“All right,” Jimmy’s mother laughed. “You may 
go, but I’m going with you.” 

Mrs. Fisher was certainly a good sport. She 
didn’t enjoy that ride nearly so much as we did—in 
fact, we rather suspected she didn’t enjoy it at all. 
Every time the car swooped down and we had that 
funny, sinky feeling in our stomach's that made us 
want to giggle, she looked as though she wished to 



166 


The Treaswre of Bdden Place 


scream. But she didn’t say a word about it—she 
just told us that she’d wait outside for us while we 
went into the House of Mirrors. 

After we had laughed at seeing Jimmy as a fat 
boy, and Patty as a fall, lean giant, and me as a 
funny roly-poly little dwarf, it was time for lunch, 
and we took a street car down town to the hotel. 
Since it was a birthday party, Patty said we should 
order anything we wanted—even to half-a-dozen 
different kinds of dessert, if we wished to. But Mrs. 
Fisher puf a stop to that', so we were satisfied with 
chocolate ice cream and cake. 

We were very serious again when we called at 
Mr. Randolph’s office a second time. What if he 
couldn’t give us any time that afternoon and we 
couldn’t see him for another six weeks? I didn’t 
see how we could stand it if we had to wait that 
long to solve the mystery. Besides, our mothers 
would be back before then, and we wouldn’t have 
any surprise for them. 

But when we walked up to the desk of the pretty 
secretary, she had good news for us. “Mr. Randolph 
will be glad to see you for a few minutes at his home, 
if you care to go out so far. Will three o’clock be 
convenient?” 



A Party and an Appointment 


167 


It wasn’t only convenient, it was heavenly; but of 
course I didn’t tell her that. She wrote the address 
on a sheet she tore from a little pad of paper; and I 
thanked her in a very dignified way and so did 
Patty. I’m sure she didn’t suspect that we wanted 
to let out a regular Indian war whoop then and 
there. 

Wouldn’t she have been surprised if we had? 







CHAPTER XVI 

THE TOPAZ BROOCH 

TI/E TOOK the street car out to Mr. Randolph’s 
home on Parker Avenue, and all the way there 
we kept wondering if he were going to be the sort of 
person it is hard to talk to. It’s queer about grown¬ 
ups; but sometimes the things that are awfully im¬ 
portant they think are funny, and the things that 
are really funny they think are serious. I suppose 
we should have thought about it before, but now 
that we were to meet the ex-governor’s son face to 
face, it was hard to know how we should go about 
asking the questions we had come to ask. 

“If he laughs,” Patty said, “I’ll simply die of em¬ 
barrassment.” 

But Mr. Randolph didn’t laugh. He received us 
cordially in his study, and he listened with a great 
deal of interest when we told him our story. He 
smiled, of course, but it was the right kind of a 
smile. We realized at once that it wasn’t going to 
be hard to tell him things, for we liked the way he 
looked at us out of the kind brown eyes behind the 
dignified spectacles. Why, I even mentioned the de¬ 
tective agency we had organized, and he didn’t even 


168 


The Topaz Brooch 


169 


seem surprised that children our age should think 
of doing such a thing. 

He only said, “You certainly have done some 
splendid detective work thus far.” 

“We thought maybe you could tell us something 
else the old colored man said about hiding the jewels 
—something that perhaps your father told you,” I 
explained. 

“I’m sorry,” he answered, “but I can’t do that. 
I do not remember ever hearing my father speak of 
the incident.” He was thoughtful for a minute. 
“I’m not sure—but I believe that I can help you out 
on those missing pages. I happen to be in possession 
of my father’s personal correspondence, and I seem 
to remember seeing several pages, obviously torn 
from a notebook of some sort. There’s a vast amount 
of it,” he continued, walking over to a filing cabinet 
on the other side of the room, “but my secretary 
went over it recently and got it into some order, so 
this shouldn’t be hard to find.” 

He turned to the compartment labeled “B” and 
after a short search he pulled out a large envelope 
marked Belden. 

“Here you are, I believe,” said Mr. Randolph, 



170 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


opening the envelope and handing us the missing 
pages to Great-grandmother Belden’s diary. 

Patty, Jimmy, and I—all three—gasped. “How 
do you suppose your father happened to have them?” 

“Here’s a letter from Mrs. Belden,” he said. “Per¬ 
haps this will explain it.” 

And, leaning back in his large swivel chair, he 
read the letter aloud to us: 

“My dear Mr. Randolph, 

“You cannot know how grateful I am for your 
kind letter and the message of gratitude you bring 
me from old Jake. But I must confess that my grati¬ 
tude is almost equalled by my curiosity, for the jewels 
the old negro took such delight in hiding for us never 
have been found. About a week after they disap¬ 
peared a child brought a message from Jake, but his 
explanations were very unsatisfactory. I have 
recorded the details of our conversation with the 
boy and of the search that followed it, in my journal 
of that period. This makes the whole thing so much 
clearer than I can possibly make it, after so long a 
time, that I am cutting the pages from my diary and 
sending them to you for your perusal. 

“I am writing to you in the hope that in the light 
of what you will read here, you may recall some hint 



The Topaz Brooch 


171 


old Jake may have given of where he hid the jewels. 
It may be just some little thing that will clear up 
the mystery—something you did not consider im¬ 
portant when you wrote me before, supposing, as 
you did, that the jewels had been recovered long ago. 
Or perhaps you can tell me the name of the boat, on 
which Jake is working, and we can trace him in that 
way. 

“Some day, when you have time, will you please 
return these sheets to my diary, so that I can mend 
my little book again? 

“With best wishes to your good mother, believe me 
Ever gratefully yours, 

Patricia Belden.” 

“Is Governor Randolph’s answer there?” I asked. 

“No,” the attorney replied. “Unfortunately, that 
was written before the days of carbon copies, but if 
you will look carefully among your Great-grand- 
mother’s things, probably you will find it.” 

“One thing is certain,” Jimmy said. “The jewels 
are there some place.” 

“I wouldn’t be too certain of finding them,” Mr. 
Randolph warned us. “If my father could have 
given Mrs. Belden any real hints, she probably would 
have discovered them herself. She was pretty smart, 



172 


The Treasv/re of Bdden Place 


you know.” He must have seen how disappointed 
we were, for he added quickly, “But who knows? 
You may find them. One never can tell what these 
twentieth century youngsters will do.” 

We kept the missing pages to the diary, of course, 
and the attorney apologized for his father, who, 
though a great man, was an absent-minded one as 
well, and had probably forgotten all about the re¬ 
quest that the pages be returned. 

We caught the five o’clock interurban and had just 
started to read those precious sheets of paper when 
we looked up and saw Peg Meredith and her mother 
in a seat across the aisle. Of course, Peg talked the 
whole time, and there was nothing to do but to give 
the pages to Mrs. Fisher for safe-keeping until we 
got home. Naturally we were disappointed; still it 
was nice to hear Mrs. Meredith say how everybody 
enjoyed our play. 

“It’s a good thing to remind people that our town 
played an important part in the Underground Rail¬ 
road,” she said. “The older folks have forgotten, 
and the children don’t even know it.” 

She went on to tell us about a big pageant she 
hopes to stage after school opens in the fall. It will 
be easier to get a large number of children together 



The Topaz Brooch 


173 


then, and the teachers will be here to help. The 
pageant is to portray the history of Fayetteville and 
—think of it!—she wants to use my playlet as one 
of the episodes. 

We were tired when we reached Belden Place, but 
not too tired to see Jean for a minute. We found 
John on the porch, putting a new hinge on the screen 
door. 

“The baby’s in there.” He nodded toward the 
library. 

“Has she been any trouble, John?” his sister 
asked. 

“Trouble?” he answered, trying to act solemn. 
“She’s been into this, that, and the other; and the 
only pay I’ve earned this day is as a nursemaid and 
not as a gardener. The little mite!” 

We had to laugh at the sheepish way John 
grinned. He never said much about it, but we knew 
that he adored the baby just as much as any of us, 
even when her curiosity led her into mischief, as it 
was always doing. 

The instant we appeared in the door of the library, 
Jean came running toward us. She was such a darl¬ 
ing, laughing and dimpling and chattering, in the 



174 


The Treamre of Belden Place 


way that babies chatter without saying anything, 
that I started to pick her up. 

Then suddenly I drew back, in astonishment. 

“Pretty!” she cried happily. “Pretty!” and held 
out her hand to me. 

And there on Jean’s pink little palm lay a topaz 
brooch surrounded by tiny diamonds. It was the 
brooch we had seen in the miniature, and on the back 
were engraved the words: To my bride, Patricia 
Belden, 1855. 










CHAPTER XVII 

GREAT-GRANDFATHER BELDEN’S DESK 

M RS ; FISHER took the brooch away from Jean. 

“Is this your mother’s?” she asked Patty. 

“Oh, no,” my cousin explained. “That must be 
one of the pieces of jewelry my great-grandmother 
lost nearly sixty years ago.” 

The housekeeper was startled. “Then how could 
Jean have gotten hold of it?” she asked. 

“That’s just it,” I said. “But if a year-and-a- 
half-old baby can find the brooch, I guess that two 
eleven-year-old girls and a ten-year-old boy can find 
the other jewels.” 

We thought perhaps John could help us, but when 
we called him into the library, he was as surprised 
as we had been. “By jiggers!” he exclaimed. “Where 
did she find that?” 

And that was all the information we could get out 
of him. Of course, he had taken care of Jean all day, 
he said, but who could keep an eye on that little 
grasshopper every second? 

“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Fisher, rather exasperated 
but smiling in spite of herself at the rueful expres¬ 
sion on her brother’s face. “I wish you were more 


175 


176 


The Treamre of Belden Place 


observing, John.” 

Jimmy took the brooch from his mother, looking 
just a tiny bit scared at the idea of holding such a 
valuable piece of jewelry in his hand, and held it out 
before his little sister. “Tell us where you found 
it, Jean,” he begged. 

Jean held out her hands eagerly for it, but all she 
would say was “Pretty! Pretty!” 

“That won’t do any good, Son,” his mother inter- 
rupted. “She’s too little to tell you. And now sup¬ 
pose, before we have any more detective work, we 
find a safe place for that brooch and have some din¬ 
ner.” 

Mrs. Fisher sounded tired, and Patty jumped up 
quickly. “We’ll help you,” she said, and we hurried 
to our room to wash and change our dresses. 

After dinner, quite a stiff breeze blowing across 
the river made the evening chilly, mid-August 
though it was. We didn’t really need it, of course, 
but Patty asked John to light a fire in the old fire¬ 
place in the library. It made everything seem so 
much cozier and our mystery so much more im¬ 
portant. Mrs. Fisher was putting Jean to bed, and 
we three children sat down on the floor before the 
fire to read the missing pages to the diary. 




And there in Jean*s pink little palm lay a topaz brooch 
surrounded by diamonds. 














































Great-Grandfather Belden’s Desk 


177 


“We shouldn’t call them that now,” I said. “The 
pages aren’t missing any longer. Why, look here! 
Great-grandmother has written something in pencil 
at the top of the first sheet.” 

Patty peered over my shoulder. “She’s j ust copied 
a little of what we read on the page that came just 
before this. I suppose she didn’t want to tear out a 
whole sheet from the diary, just for the sake of a few 
words, and yet she wanted Governor Randolph to 
have the whole story. Read it out loud, won’t you, 
Patsy?” 

“A very strange thing happened today,” I began, 
stumbling over the words just a little at first, be¬ 
cause the penciled lines were blurred now and hard 
to read, “and I believe it throws considerable light 
on the loss of the jewels.” 

“Oh, we’ve heard that once,” my cousin broke in. 
“Let’s begin where we left off last time. She told, 
didn’t she, about how old Jake called and found none 
of them at home?” 

“But he did find—” I began to read again. 

“Yes,” Jimmy cried excitedly. “What did he find. 
Patsy? That’s what we want to know.” 

“But He did find robbers in the House,” I went on 



178 


The Treamre of Belden Place 


reading, “and a heap of jewels on the desk in the 
library.” 

“It must have been that very desk,” my cousin 
interrupted to point out to Jimmy the old Sheraton 
secretary over in the corner. It belonged to Great¬ 
grandfather Belden.” 

“Fellow detectives,” I said in just as business¬ 
like a way as I knew how, “shall I presume with the 
reading?” 

“Oh, she means resume,” Patty giggled. “Yes, 
Patsy, darling, please presume!” 

I threw a sofa cushion at her, and the minute I did 
it I was sorry. It certainly is not a good time to 
start a pillow fight when three detectives are just 
about to make an important discovery. But Patty 
showed her usual presence of mind. Instead of hurl¬ 
ing the sofa cushion back at me, she sat down on it, 
and I went on with the diary. 

“The robbers were in the kitchen,” I read, “when 
old Jake arrived, according to the small boy’s story, 
and, thinking themselves quite alone, no doubt, were 
helping themselves to a feast out of our cellars. 

“Jake had only a few minutes before he must re¬ 
turn to his boat, and there was no time to call for 
help. He heard one of the robbers coming down the 




(■rrmt^rand/at/ter Belden’s Desk 


179 


hall, and, knowing he would fare ill if caught there, 
he hid the jewels and escaped. 

“But the tragedy is that we do not know where he 
hid them. It was only after much difficulty and 
several hours of careful questioning that we were 
able to get this story from the little boy. But all 
our questioning did no good when it came to finding 
out the hiding place of my lost jewels—the child 
simply could not tell us. 

“The boat had docked only a short time about ten 
miles down the river, and the old darky had only a 
few minutes to give the message to the boy. Poor 
old man who was once a slave! Of course, he could 
not write, and it probably never occurred to him to 
ask someone else to write a letter for him or that 
the child was rather young and—if I may say so— 
a little stupid to be entrusted with such a secret. At 
any rate, all we could learn as to the Hiding place of 
the jewels was that the old man had ‘stuffed them 
in, yes, sah, stuffed them right in’ and had laughed 
over the joke he had played the robbers. 

“This message, incoherent though it was, gave 
us fresh heart to make another search. And searched 
we have—in every room—hut these last efforts have 
proved as fruitless as the others. Either the hiding 



180 


The Treaswre of Belden Place 


place that old Jake chose is too hard for anyone to 
find, or it was so easy that the robbers themselves 
discovered it.” 

I laid the diary down. “Oh, do you suppose those 
terrible old robbers could have found the jewels after 
all?” I cried. 

Jimmy shook his head. “I don’t believe your 
Great-grandma was right there,” he said. 

“It’s perfectly clear to me where those jewels 
are,” Patty interrupted, although the way she said 
it didn’t sound half so cocksure as the words them¬ 
selves did. “Old Jake probably discovered another 
secret room or cubby-hole and hid them in that.” 

I reminded her that, since Great-grandfather had 
built the house himself, he would have known about 
all the secret places, even though other folks didn’t, 
and that they would have looked in those places first 
of all. 

“But there might be a hidden place in some of 
the furniture,” Jimmy suggested. “You said that 
your Great-grandpa brought some of it here from 
his home in Virginia.” 

“That’s a dandy idea, Jimmy,” I said. “Some of 
the furniture even came from England and there 



Great-Grandfather Belden’s Desk 


181 


might have been some secret compartments that 
Great-grandfather didn’t know about.” 

We wanted to start in then and there, looking 
over the furniture, but Mrs. Fisher came downstairs 
and insisted that we’d better go to bed. It had been 
an exciting day, and she said that a good night’s 
rest would make us feel refreshed for our search. 

The next morning right after breakfast—which 
she insisted that we eat, though none of us felt the 
least bit hungry—we began our examination of the 
furniture, starting in with the music room right 
across the hall from the library. 

“There’s no need wasting time on any of the new 
pieces,” Patty said. “Just the things that were 
here in Great-grandmother’s day—for instance, that 
piano.” 

And my cousin lifted up the top of the old square, 
rosewood piano and peered inside, then began run¬ 
ning her hands over the shining surface, as though 
searching for a spring or a secret opening. I opened 
the door of the old mahogany clock on the mantel. 
On the lower part of the long glass door there was 
a picture of a field of daisies with a little girl about 
my age gathering a big armful of them, but the 
painted daisy field concealed nothing more alarm- 



182 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


ing than the pendulum. Jimmy began examining, 
in turn, the three high-backed, rush-bottomed chairs. 
After that we tried the little carved table over in 
the corner and the Queen Anne highboy, but with¬ 
out the least success. 

It was pretty discouraging and presently Jimmy 
stopped working altogether. He looked out of the 
window, whistling softly under his breath, but when 
suddenly he turned to us and began to talk, we saw 
that he hadn’t just been idling. 

“Has your great-grandpa’s desk always been in 
that room across the hall?” he asked. 

“I suppose so,” I answered. “That room has al¬ 
ways been the library. At least, I think so, because 
some of the bookcases are built right into the walls.” 

“Then wouldn’t the jewels be in there near the 
desk, where old Jake found them?” he went on. 

“I don’t know.” Patty was doubtful. “I don’t 
imagine the desk itself has been moved, because 
Great-grandfather used that room for his study. But 
lots of the other furniture has been changed about, 
and we’re likely to find the piece we want most any¬ 
where—in here or up in the attic—” 

But Jimmy stuck to his point. “If Jake found the 
jewels on the desk,” he interrupted, “wouldn’t the 



Great-Grandfather Belden’s Desk 


183 


first place he’d think of hiding them be in the desk. 
And wasn’t Jean near the»desk when we found her 
with the brooch?” 

Patty and I stopped short. “Of course,” I cried. 

“And in the stories, the old desks are always hav¬ 
ing secret compartments and things like that,” added 
Patty, as excited as I was. 

Aunt May had often joked about the furniture in 
her house. There was a time when having so many 
old-fashioned things had been considered rather 
shabby. But now she said she had learned that if 
she would just wait long enough, everything she had 
would come back in style. It was that way with 
Great-grandfather’s old Sheraton secretary-desk, 
made of inlaid mahogany. A few years ago it was 
worth practically nothing, so far as money goes. But 
now, if Aunt May had wished to sell, it would have 
brought almost any price she cared to ask. It was 
a roomy old affair, with a place for books on top. We 
had no difficulty opening the glass doors, but the top 
shelf was so high we had to stand on a chair to reach 
it. 

Although we took out all the books, we could find 
nothing of interest there. Below the desk proper, 
two doors opened into a roomy compartment, con- 



184 


The Treaswre of Belden Place 


sisting of several shelves, now unused. We ex¬ 
amined these carefully, too, but there seemed to be 
nothing to discover. 

“We’d better look at the desk part,” Patty sug¬ 
gested, as she sat down in Great-grandfather’s old 
chair and pulled back the lid. What we saw were 
two thick columns, dividing the back part of the 
desk into three sections. There was a tier of four 
drawers on either side and, in the middle part, two 
drawers, one on top the other, and, above these, four 
pigeon-holes. 

We tried to pull the drawers out all the way, in 
order to examine them more thoroughly, but they 
opened so far and no farther. Whether they were 
stuck or were not intended to open all the way, we 
could not tell. 

We looked through all of them, one after the 
other, but found only useless odds and ends. Then 
in the last drawer, the lower one of the left-hand 
tier, we made our discovery. It had seemed to move 
more easily than the others, from the start, and 
Jimmy kept monkeying with it, till, with a jerk, he 
had it out. 

“I just pressed down on it very hard, when I 



Great-Grandfather Belden’s Desk 


185 


pulled,” he explained, “and that must have released 
the spring that held it.” 

“That drawer is not as long as the others,” I said. 
“Perhaps—” 

I didn’t dare say it, but, of course, I was hoping 
that I’d find the jewels at the back end of that dark 
little tunnel where the drawer had been. I put my 
hand inside. 

My fingers encountered something cold, and I 
cried out before I thought. You should have seen 
Patty and Jim perk up. 

“Are they the—are they the—,” my cousin 
gasped. 

The next instant I had pressed the spring and 
the left-hand column opened about an inch. Jimmy 
grabbed it, and when I let go the spring, it snapped 
back, holding his fingers tight. 

He winced a little but said nothing, while Patty 
and I began to pry at the wood to get his hand out. 
At last, I had sense enough to touch the spring again. 

“Whew, I won’t try that a second time,” Jimmy 
exclaimed, “We can use this paper weight to hold it. 
Let me feel that spring, Patsy.” 

He tried it, but it didn’t do any good, because the 
column seemed stuck like all the drawers. 



186 


The Treamre of Belden Place 


“It’s the place where old Jake hid the jewels,” 
Patty cried, her breath coming in sharp little gasps. 
“We must get into it. Bring a hatchet, Jimmy. 
We’ll break it open if we have to. Mother won’t 
mind when she finds out why we did it.” 

That showed just how excited Patty really was. 
Why, Aunt May would have been terribly upset if 
we had started hacking at her beloved old Sheraton 
secretary and so would Patty, under ordinary cir¬ 
cumstances. 

But at that moment none of us considered that. 
We were so interested in the old desk and finding 
the jewels that it seemed impossible for us to think 
of anything else, even for a minute. Just then Mrs. 
Fisher walked into the room. 

“Mr. Whiteside has come for the old furniture,” 
she said. “Have you taken the upholstering off the 
sofa and the chairs?” 

We looked at one another in dismay. “Can’t he 
come some other time?” I asked crossly. 

Mr. Whiteside was standing in the hall and heard 
me. “Why, yes,” he said obligingly, “I have another 
call to make in this neighborhood, and I can come 
back in half an hour.” 

“Gee,” said Jimmy, after the man had gone. 



Great-Grandfather Belden’s Desk 


187 


“That doesn’t help us much. It’ll take every bit that 
long to get that old horsehair off.” 

“Oh, dear!” I said. “We can’t leave the desk, 
now that we’re just about to find out everything. 
We just can’t! Don’t you suppose Mr. Whiteside 
could take the upholstering off himself?” 

Patty looked as though she wanted to cry, but 
she said with quite a determined air, “You may do 
as you please. But I promised Mother I would help 
her save expense by taking off that upholstering, and 
I’m going to do it.” 

It was just about the hardest decision I ever made 
in my life, but I knew we couldn’t desert Patty. 

“And we’re going to help you,” I said. “The 
secret drawer will just have to wait another half 
an hour.” 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE JEWELS OF THE FIRST PATRICIA 

IT turned out, this was a very lucky decision. 

Patty raced up the stairs. At the top she turned, 
just as I reached the bottom step. 

“Bring some newspapers,” she called. 

I turned back to the hall table for the morning 
paper, which lay there, still unopened. Jimmy dis¬ 
appeared through the back door of the long hall and 
came back an instant later with a screw driver and 
a pair of pliers. 

It was only a minute or two more before we had 
the papers spread out on the floor in the mystery 
room, in our efforts to be tidy, and had begun to 
pull out the huge brass-headed tacks in the sofa, 
slipping the screw driver in behind them to pry 
them loose, then using the pliers. But this was too 
slow for my cousin, and, taking a pair of heavy 
shearers from Mrs. Fisher’s work basket, she split 
the horsehair and even cut out huge, jagged pieces 
in several places. The three of us delved right in, 
taking out handfuls of the funny, crinkly stuffing. 

We were working at a rate of speed that would 
have done credit to the first Patricia herself. And 


188 


The^ Jewels of the First Patricia 


189 


not one of us had a word to say. But we were all 
thinking the same thing—we were wondering about 
the secret compartment in the old Sheraton desk 
and how we were to get into it. It seemed as though 
we simply couldn’t bear it if we didn’t find those 
missing jewels pretty soon. 

And then —and then, my fingers closed on some¬ 
thing round and long and smooth, and when I 
brought out my next handful of crinkly stuffing, 
something else came with it. 

“Great-grandmother’s pearls!” In my astonish¬ 
ment I could only whisper the words, as I showed 
them to the others. They were soft and lustrous 
and very smooth and beautiful, and as I held them 
up against the light a soft pink glow came from 
them. 

It is a strange thing that at that moment none 
of us stopped to admire them or to exclaim in our 
surprise over finding them in that strange place. I 
simply put the pearls in the pocket of my dress and 
with one accord we again turned to the old sofa. If 
we Had worked fast before, we worked in a frenzy 
of haste now, but though we made the horsehair fly, 
the supply of our jewelry mine, as Patty called it, 
seemed to be exhausted. 



190 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


“This isn’t going to get us anywhere,” she de¬ 
clared. “We’ll have to go slower.” 

And we did, although it wasn’t easy when we 
were so excited. We began examining that crinkly 
stuffing very carefully and, sure enough, pretty 
soon we found a pair of amethyst earrings. 

“Oh, aren’t they beauties?” I cried, and slipped 
them into my pocket beside the pearls. 

It was at this moment that Mrs. Fisher walked 
in to tell us that Mr. Whiteside was ready for the 
sofa. She had been up in the attic, taking the up¬ 
holstering off the two chairs, and he already had 
loaded them into the wagon. 

“Oh, he’ll simply have to wait,” wailed Patty, and 
I let the Housekeeper take a peep into my pocket— 
my jewelry pocket, as we afterwards called it. 

Mrs. Fisher looked just about flabbergasted, but 
she didn’t let her surprise get the best of her com- 
monsense. She turned in and helped us strip the 
rest of that upholstering off the sofa, until all of it 
lay on the newspapers, with, goodness knows, how 
many jewels inside of it. Then we managed to 
carry the sofa out into the next room, and Mr. 
Whiteside and his men came up and took it away. 

Now that we had wrecked our jewelry mine, our 



The Jewels of the First Patricia 


191 


next job was to find out what else had been inside of 
it. If Mr. Whitney had seen us, he would have said 
we were acting like chickens with their heads off, 
but with Mrs. Fisher there to help us, we began to 
work more calmly. 

And from then on our search began to yield one 
interesting piece of jewelry after another. There 
were several rings, a cameo, a belt buckle and 
another one of coral, a gold bracelet shaped like a 
serpent, with ruby eyes; a pair of silver slipper 
buckles, some gold beads and two arrows with dia¬ 
mond heads which, we afterwards learned, had at 
one time been worn as ornaments for the hair. 

“Goodness!” I said. “I feel like a walking jewelry 
store or a safety vault.” 

“That’s the only place for them too,” the house¬ 
keeper suggested, looking worried at the idea of hav¬ 
ing to be responsible for so many jewels. “You’d 
better take them down to the bank this morning, and 
leave them there till your mothers get back and de¬ 
cide what to do about them.” 

“How do you suppose they ever got in that old 
sofa?” Jimmy asked, still feeling rather awed. He 
had never seen so many jewels at one time in his 
life before, and for that much neither Had we. 



192 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


That was a hard question to answer, for Patty 
and I had been wondering just about the same thing. 
But finally we figured it all out. 

Old Jake, in his haste, must have split several 
holes in the back and seat of the sofa with a knife— 
or, perhaps the horsehair was beginning to show 
wear and was a little holey already—and dropped 
the jewelry in, piece at a time, and then patted it 
down to look smooth, so as not to arouse the sus¬ 
picions of the robbers. Well, he must have patted 
it down to look so very smooth that even Great¬ 
grandmother Patricia hadn’t suspected, and had 
merely darned the slits in her own neat way to get 
her mind off the loss of the jewels. That much the 
diary had told us. 

“But how did Jean get hold of that brooch?” Jim¬ 
my insisted. 

“She probably reached up to the sofa and put 
her hand inside one of the holes,” my cousin 
answered. “You’ve noticed how worn the upholster¬ 
ing was, haven’t you, and how Patsy and I were al¬ 
ways poking our fingers in to feel the crinkly stuff 
inside? Well, probably Jean liked the funny, tickly 
feel of it, just as we did.” 

“Jean deserves a reward,” I said, “a new doll any- 



The Jewels of the First Patricia 


193 


way. With all our poking, Patty, we never pulled 
out a thousand dollar brooch, or whatever it is that 
such things cost.” 

We started for the bank then, but before we left 
we simply had to know what was in that secret com¬ 
partment in Great-grandfather’s old desk. John 
opened it for us without a bit of trouble. It was 
merely stuck and had required greater strength than 
ours to get it open—that was all. But all we found 
were some old letters — interesting but not par¬ 
ticularly valuable, so far as we could see. Among 
them was the letter from Governor Randolph in 
answer to Great-grandmother Patricia’s note, but 
he had no information to give her—nothing that 
would have helped us in our search. True, he had 
written the officers of the boat that employed Jake. 
But in the meantime the kind old negro had died, 
and no one knew his story. 

John walked down town with us, and Patty and 
I pretended that we were bank messengers and that 
he was the plain clothes man who was guarding us. 

When we took the jewelry in to Mr. Carney at 
the bank, he was very much impressed and compli¬ 
mented my cousin and me on being splendid de¬ 
tectives. We told him that Jimmy had done just 



194 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


as much as we had and that we wanted him to have 
every cent of the one hundred dollars reward that 
Great-grandfather had offered. 

Mr. Carney screwed up his face the funny way 
he always does, when he’s feeling especially 
thoughtful, and said, "Who’s Jimmy?” 

"He’s lots of things.” Patty laughed. “He’s the 
housekeeper’s son; he’s the gardener’s nephew; and 
he’s the mystery boy—the one we found in the 
secret room.” 

My cousin told me later that she hadn’t intended 
to say anything like that at all. Somehow it had 
just slipped out, but after she had said that much 
there was nothing to do but to go ahead and tell 
the whole story. A thrilling story she made out of 
it, too, but evidently the banker didn’t think so. 

"Oh, so that was the boy who helped you with 
your play.” 

"Yes. Didn’t he do his part well?” I asked, but 
Mr. Carney didn’t seem interested in that either. 

"It’s fortunate you brought the jewels to the 
bank,” he said briefly. “Are you quite sure you 
have them all?” 

“What—what do you mean?” I asked. I didn’t 
like his tone of voice. 



The Jewels of the First Patricia 


195 


“Nothing, Patsy,” he answered, “except that I 
want your mothers’ address. As an old friend of 
the family, I feel that I should let them know the 
situation.” 

Patty and I looked at each other. All of a sud¬ 
den we realized just what it was that Mr. Carney 
meant. Maybe, he thought that our dear, kind 
Mrs. Fisher—we could hardly bring ourselves to 
even think it—but perhaps he thought that Jim¬ 
my and his mother weren’t quite honest—and 
all because they loved each other and the children 
had no place else to go. A lump came right up in 
my throat when I tried to answer him. 

“Why, Mr. Carney,” I said, “we’ve already writ¬ 
ten Aunt May about Jimmy and Jean. She hasn’t 
answered yet, but we know it will be all right— 
Jimmy’s such a nice boy. And Mrs. Fisher—why, 
we just love her. She’s always baking us ginger¬ 
bread men and doing things like that.” 

This seemed a good argument to us, but some¬ 
how the banker didn’t seem to appreciate it. He 
just smiled down at us in the way we didn’t like to 
be smiled at, as though he didn’t think we knew 
anything at all. It was hard to say anything after 
a smile like that, but Patty managed it. 



196 


The Treamre of Belden Place 


“Anyway,” she said, “we are going to let Jimmy 
have all the reward.” 

Mr. Carney shook his head. “I wouldn’t count 
too much on anybody getting a reward,” he said, 
“since the man who offered it is no longer living.” 

My cousin and I walked home in silence. “It’s a 
shame!” I burst out finally, as we turned in at 
the gate. “I know that Jimmy wouldn’t ask for 
a reward. But he does want to study art so much 
and this money would give him such a dandy start.” 

“That’s not what is worrying me right now,” 
Patty answered. “You could see that Mr. Carney 
didn’t understand about Mrs. Fisher. What if he 
writes and tells Mother that the housekeeper did 
something very wrong and our mothers think so, 
too, and won’t let Jimmy and Jean stay till the 
orphanage can take them.” 

I stopped short—I hadn’t thought of that. “May¬ 
be Aunt May won’t want Mrs. Fisher or John any¬ 
more either. Oh, I wish that Mr. Carney wasn’t 
going to write. If we could just see our mothers 
first, I know they would understand.” 

But the troubles of the day weren’t ended, as we 
found out when we looked over the mail on the hall 
table. There was the letter we had posted to Aunt 




The 'Jewels of the First Patricia 


197 


May the morning after we had discovered Jean and 
Jimmy in the secret room; and it was marked: “Not 
listed in directory. Return to sender.” 

“Why, you put on the wrong street number,” I 
said. “Mrs. Richards lives at 3563 Weston Avenue, 
not 563.” 

“Don’t I know that?” said Patty miserably. “I 
should have addressed it in care of Mrs. Richards 
anyway. Oh, how could I have been so careless?” 

“Never mind! We can send this same letter to 
them in another envelope and write a note explain¬ 
ing how it happened to come back to us. We might 
tell them, too, we have a wonderful surprise for 
them when they get home.” 

Patty was so downcast about her mistake that I 
did my best to console her, although I wasn’t feel¬ 
ing very perky about it myself. No wonder our 
mothers had asked who Jimmy was. I only hoped 
our letter would reach them before Mr. Carney’s 
did. 



CHAPTER XIX 

REWARDS AND DISAPPOINTMENTS 

TT WASN’T long before nearly everyone in 

Fayetteville knew what we had found, and the 
reporter from the Evening Banner came to see us 
and wrote about it in the paper. The next Sunday 
the story was copied in the Arlington Herald, with 
a big headline saying: “Children Find Heirlooms 
Lost Half a Century.” And we just couldn’t help 
feeling a little proud when we saw that. One of 
the men on the paper wrote and asked us for our 
pictures, but since our mothers weren’t there to tell 
us what to do, we didn’t think we’d better let him 
have them. 

Oh, it was just lots of fun—having people stop 
us on the street and say, “Well, well, we never knew 
we had three first-class detectives living right here 
in Fayetteville. 

And old Mr. Whitney down at the grocery store 
said he thought he ought to have some credit be¬ 
cause he had started us to hunting for the myste¬ 
rious room and in that way we had found, first Jean 
and Jimmy, then the diary, and then the jewels. 

“But the jewels weren’t in the mystery room at 


198 


Rewards and Disa/ppomtments 


199 


all,” we insisted, “till about three weeks ago when 
the sofa was moved in for Jimmy to sleep on. They 
were in the old sofa that we’ve sat on just hours and 
hours, reading and playing make-believe games.” 

“Leastwise,” said Mr. Whitney as he handed us 
each a piece of candy across the counter, “I started 
you on your search.” 

This was true, of course, but then we couldn’t 
answer him anyway, because he had given us per¬ 
fectly unchewable pieces of taffy. 

Three days passed, but no word came from 
Mother or Aunt May. The suspense was terrible— 
it almost took away the thrill of being good de¬ 
tectives and all that. Patty and I didn’t say a word 
about Mr. Carney taking Aunt May’s address to 
write to her, but we were worried and I guess we 
showed it. At any rate, Jimmy, and his mother too, 
seemed to feel that something was wrong and 
watched the mail box almost as closely as we did. 

Patty and I were out on the front porch, em¬ 
broidering, the morning of the fourth day. “If the 
postman doesn’t bring a letter this afternoon,” said 
my cousin, “I’m going to ‘phone Mother by long dis¬ 
tance.” 

She had no more than said it than the town jit- 



200 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


ney stopped at the front gate. Joe, the driver, took 
out the baggage and opened the door—and Mother 
and Aunt May stepped out. Patty and I were down 
to the gate before you could wink, and were being 
hugged and kissed. 

Our mothers were almost as excited as we were. 
“What's all this finding the lost jewels?” Aunt 
May demanded, as the four of us went up the gravel 
walk, her arm around Patty and Mother’s arm 
around me. 

Patty and I stopped short in amazement. Mother 
laughed. 

“Joe, the jitney driver, told us. But it can’t be 
true, can it?” 

I don’t believe I was ever happier than at that 
minute—why, I even forgot Jimmy, and Patty did, 
too. When our mothers learned that we had actual¬ 
ly found the missing jewels, they were just about as 
pleased as we had been. They were awfully proud 
of us, too. Really, it almost made me want to be a 
lady detective instead of an author when I grow up. 

There was nothing to do but to take Mother and 
Aunt May down to the bank then and there, al¬ 
though they hadn’t had a bite of lunch. They were 
so thrilled when they saw the jewels, and, since they 



Rewards and Disappointments 


201 


were the only heirs, they divided them then and 
there. The jewels would belong to my cousin and 
me some day, they told us, and perhaps they could 
have two of the more simple rings cut down for us 
to begin wearing right away. Mother took the 
pearls and promised that they should be mine when 
I was twenty-one, and Aunt May said that Patty 
should come into possession of the diamond and 
topaz brooch on the same day. 

On the way back to Belden Place I asked Mother 
about the reward and explained how Jimmy had 
helped us. Since Patty and I were to have the 
jewels, we thought that he should get something out 
of it, too. 

Mother’s face clouded. “It was because of Jim¬ 
my that we came home so suddenly,” she said. “But 
it wasn’t to give him a reward.” 

“Did you get a letter from Mr. Carney?” I was 
almost afraid to ask it. 

Mother nodded. “It came in the same mail with 
yours.” 

I didn’t say anything—I just couldn’t—and 
Mother went on, “We didn’t like it—Mrs. Fisher 
hiding the children that way. We thought we had 



202 


The Treasure of Belden Place 


better hurry right back and straighten matters 
out.” 

I couldn’t help it—big girl, though I am, I cried. 
Luckily, we had reached Belden Place by this time, 
and Mother led me over to the garden seat beneath 
the old mulberry tree, and I told her the whole story. 

“Mrs. Fisher just had to do it,” I finished. “There 
wasn’t any place for Jean and Jimmy. Oh, Mother, 
please don’t let Aunt May send them away.” 

“Don’t cry, Patsy,” she said, holding me tight. 
“We’ll have a talk with the housekeeper after 
lunch.” 










CHAPTER XX 
SEVERAL TREASURES 

TlfE NEVER knew what went on behind the 
closed door of the library that afternoon. 
Mother and Aunt May were in there, and John and 
Mrs. Fisher. Jean was asleep upstairs in her little 
crib. Jimmy was out on the porch with us; and he 
seemed shaky and pale, just as his mother had, when 
she passed through the hall a few minutes before. We 
knew what that waiting meant to Jimmy—the con¬ 
ference in the library was to decide, not only whether 
he and Jean could stay for the rest of the month, but 
whether his mother could stay at all. I am sure 
that was what worried him most. My cousin and I 
had tried our best to explain the situation to our 
mothers, and now all that we could hope for was 
that they would understand. 

We couldn’t bear it any longer—just waiting 
around like that; so we went into the orchard to 
play hide-and-seek. But a very half-hearted game 
it was, and we were glad to stop when we saw John 
leaving the back door for the greenhouse. Jimmy 
followed him, and Patty and I went around to the 
front to find our mothers. 


203 


204 


The Treamre of Bdden Place 


Aunt May was just turning from the telephone. 
“May Jean and Jimmy stay?” I asked. 

She put her arm around me. “Don’t know, Patsy. 
I must talk it over with your mother first—and— 
and—have an answer to my phone call, too.” 

Mother changed the subject as she led the way 
out on the porch. “Now, girls, give us all the de¬ 
tails. How did you know where to look for the 
jewels in the first place?” 

“We didn’t,” I told her. “But after we found 
Great-grandmother Belden’s diary—” 

Aunt May was all attention. “Did you actually 
find the diary, too? For goodness sake, let me see 
it! Quick!” 

Patty ran and got it for her in a hurry and when 
we slipped away we left Aunt May reading it aloud 
to Mother. It was nearly dinner time when we 
heard them calling us. 

‘‘Listen, girls!” Aunt May said, her breath com¬ 
ing and going in quick little gasps, in her excite¬ 
ment. “We’re very happy to think that you found 
the jewels. But, do you know, I believe a greater 
treasure is in this little diary. The descriptions of 
Civil War days are quite unusual, and the parts 
about the runaway slaves are so touching and inti- 



Several Treasures 


205 


mate and personal. I know a publisher who I 
believe will be glad to get this book.” 

“Oh, do you really think so?” I cried. “Then 
Jimmy can have his reward, can’t he?” 

“Bless your hearts!” Mother put one arm around 
Patty and another around me. “All three of you 
will have your reward, if this book takes as May 
thinks it will. In any case, we’ll be glad to pay the 
one hundred dollars to Jimmy for helping you.” 

“We’ll put the money in the bank just as it comes 
in,” promised Aunt May, “and we’ll be letting it 
draw interest for you until you are ready to go off 
to school.” 

Glad as we were to hear this, there was something 
else we were more eager to know just then. “Can— 
can Jimmy—” Patty began. 

The telephone rang and Aunt May hurried in to 
answer it. When she came back she nodded to my 
mother. “Yes, it can be fixed up,” she said. “At 
very little cost, too, if John and Jimmy care to do 
the work.” 

Then both of them laughed when they saw that 
Patty and I were about to burst with curiosity. 

“Go and call Mrs. Fisher,” Mother said. 

We couldn’t imagine what it was all about, but 



206 


The Treasure of Bdden Place 


we hurried to do as she told us. We called Jimmy, 
too, and brought Jean along. 

“John just phoned,” Aunt May said, when we 
were all together, “and the estimates on the mate¬ 
rials to repair the gardener’s cottage are reasonable 
enough—in fact, lower than I had expected. I think, 
Mrs. Fisher, you’ll be very comfortable there with 
your little family.” 

Mother had a suggestion, too. The Women’s Club 
expected to open its day nursery in another month 
and Mrs. Fisher could leave Jean there in the day¬ 
time when Jimmy started to school in September. 

All this time Patty and I had been almost too sur¬ 
prised by the turn events had taken to say a word. 
Evidently, now that our mothers had talked with 
Mrs. Fisher, they didn’t blame her any more. In 
fact, Aunt May said that she was such a fine woman 
and such a good housekeeper that she couldn’t af¬ 
ford to lose her. 

“And will Jean and Jimmy live here all the time?” 
I asked, hardly able to believe the good news. 

Mother nodded—they hadn’t wanted to tell us un¬ 
til they were sure of it themselves — and Jimmy 
burst out, “I’m to help Uncle John fix it up, too—- 



Several Treasures 


207 


that swell little house, you know, that I liked so well 
that day.” 

“There will be other little jobs around Belden 
Place, too,” Aunt May said, “for a boy who wants 
to save his money to go to art school. I’ve seen 
some of your work, Jimmy, and I think it’s well 
worth saving for.” 

My goodness! Things had been happening so fast 
that we had forgotten the reward. When we told 
Jimmy, he was so happy that, timid though he was, 
he simply had to begin turning handsprings to get 
rid of his excitement. And Jean cooed and Mrs. 
Fisher wiped something out of her eye with the 
corner of her apron. 

“I’m very grateful,” she said hesitatingly, “and 
I’m sorry that you had your visit cut so short.” 

“It was worth it,” Mother assured her, “to come 
home and find that our daughters had discovered 
the long-lost treasure of Belden Place.” 

“Yes,” Aunt May agreed, “it was. But this is 
what I call the real treasure.” And she held up the 
worn little diary that had belonged to Great-grand¬ 
mother Patricia. 

“When Jimmy is a great artist,” I said giggling, 



208 


The Treamre of Bdden Place 


“perhaps we’ll say that we found the treasure when 
we discovered him.” 

Patty picked up Jimmy’s little sister and held her 
close. “I think that Jean’s the treasure of Belden 
Place,” she said. “If you can find a nicer treasure 
than a year-and-a-half-old baby, I’d like to see it.” 
















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